Ever since Liam Neeson transitioned into an action star, many of his films unfold with little effort on his part. Starting with Taken and onward through Blacklight, Neeson is content with modestly budgeted action thrillers that have the potential for modest profits. Sure, sometimes Neeson plays a more substantive role, like in Martin Scorsese’s Silence or Steve McQueen’s underrated Widows, but mostly he is content with films that requires little more than the minimum from him. The new thriller Retribution is the nadir of the Neeson industrial complex of low-rent thrillers. Or maybe it’s the ideal version of this kind of film? Either way, he sleepwalks through the motions, to the point that this role barely requires him to move.
Despite being in his seventies and Taken being made 15 years ago, Neeson still finds roles where he has teenage children. In this iteration, he plays Matt, a successful businessman who lives in Berlin with his family. Through frustration and guilt, one morning Matt decides to take his two kids (Jack Champion and Lilly Aspell) to school one morning. At first, the tension is the typical stuff you might see from sullen teenagers, then something alarming happens. Someone planted a cell phone in Matt’s car, and the mysterious voice on the other end of the line tells him that there is a bomb inside. If Matt or his children attempt to exit the car, it will explode. Retribution then becomes a race through Berlin, with Matt desperate to follow the bomber’s demands and to protect his family.
At first, director Nimród Antal and screenwriter Chris Salmanpour admittedly find some clever ways to add visual flair to the limited premise. Aside from obligatory chases, there are many moments where Matt must watch tragedy unfold helplessly, or outsiders find his demands to be erratic. A plot eventually develops, one that involves a ransom and Matt’s ethically dubious business dealings, although mostly we watch Neeson strike an emotional balance between anger and desperation. Nearly all of Retribution takes place in the car, which means that the aging Neeson does not require the “set of skills” that made his past thrillers so popular among action fiends. Now there is no reason a film set entirely in a car cannot be compelling: Steven Knight’s Locke does exactly that, although Tom Hardy’s character has more plausible problems than Neeson in this film. The thin premise has a haphazard quality, a plot that makes little attempt to escalate the stakes in a propulsive way. When the cops attempt to intervene or we learn the identity of the bomber, those twists inspire little more than a shrug. No one, not even the most reliable action star, could convincingly elevate this material.
Neeson has been stuck on planes and trains, so it’s perhaps inevitable that there is a film whose premise involves an automobile. By the halfway point, Antal does not exactly use the limited premise as an opportunity for cinematic invention, since a lot of what happens in Retribution could be replicated with Matt stuck in a conference room with CCTV access. The car chases are more perfunctory than exciting, including a bizarre final scene where Matt figures a way out of the car by accident, rather than through brilliant improvisation. Just like what might happen during a long car ride, this is the sort of thriller that gets our mind to wander because daydreaming is more interesting than anything that happens on the screen. Between this film and Marlowe, Neeson’s earlier film this year, the septuagenarian phase of his career lacks the excitement of excellent genre shlock like The Grey. Who knows? Given Neeson’s newfound aversion to physical performances, maybe in a few years a creative director will attempt to make a thriller where the Neeson character spends the entire film on a motorized wheelchair.
Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions
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