{"id":31464,"date":"2023-08-26T06:18:58","date_gmt":"2023-08-26T06:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/?p=31464"},"modified":"2023-08-26T07:05:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T07:05:49","slug":"retribution-liam-neeson-action-hero-will-not-slow-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/?p=31464","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Retribution\u2019: Liam Neeson, action hero, will not slow down"},"content":{"rendered":"
A man is sitting on a bomb that has been planted in his car by a mysterious tormentor in the umpteenth thriller starring the AARP-eligible actor. With a metronomic regularity that didn\u2019t even let up during the pandemic, Liam Neeson has continued to appear in one virtually interchangeable action thriller after another since reinventing himself as an action hero (in his 50s) with 2008\u2019s \u201cTaken.\u201d In recent years, the 71-year-old Oscar nominee (\u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d) has played a crotchety Arizona cattle rancher protecting a Mexican boy from a drug-cartel goon in \u201cThe Marksman,\u201d an avenging grandpa\/FBI operative in \u201cBlacklight\u201d and a hit man with Alzheimer\u2019s disease in \u201cMemory.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his newest film, \u201cRetribution\u201d \u2014 a remake of a 2015 Spanish film of the same name \u2014 Neeson plays Matt Turner, an American investment banker in Berlin. While chauffeuring his teenage son and daughter to school one day, Matt learns he is sitting on a bomb that will detonate if he stops the car, tries to get out or otherwise fails to obey the instructions of a mysterious stranger at the other end of his cellphone. These instructions include driving from one point to another, where Matt witnesses \u2014 and then is gradually implicated in \u2014 a string of car bombings that kill several of his co-workers. Noma Dumezweni plays the appealingly dogged, no-nonsense Europol detective who is hot on his trail.<\/p>\n

So far, so familiar, at least in the broadest contours of a story about a man under \u2026 let\u2019s just call it duress. (Matt\u2019s wife is also considering divorcing him because he\u2019s emotionally unavailable, and there are hints of possible financial chicanery.) Unlike many of Neeson\u2019s characters, Matt doesn\u2019t possess \u201ca very particular set of skills\u201d here, as the actor\u2019s character in \u201cTaken,\u201d Bryan Mills, so euphemistically described his own lethality. Matt has a driver\u2019s license and his wits. And maybe that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n

This is the third collaboration between Neeson and producers Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman (they worked on \u201cNon-Stop\u201d in 2014 and \u201cThe Commuter\u201d in 2018). Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Neeson in those two films (as well as \u201cUnknown\u201d and \u201cRun All Night\u201d), here moves into the producer\u2019s chair. Although there\u2019s a certain cozy comfort to watching Neeson and his regular collaborators do their thing for the umpteenth time, a thing the actor has now been doing for 15 years, the whole operation feels more like a well-oiled machine \u2014 a cold commodity \u2014 than a warm blanket, or even a living thing. As Heineman put it in the film\u2019s press material, \u201cOver our time with Liam, we\u2019ve got to crash a plane and derail a train. In \u2018Retribution,\u2019 we are blowing cars up all over Berlin.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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