Three years ago, Liam Neeson claimed he was quitting the action genre. Now, that many years later, and with three additional action movies added to his filmography (“The Commuter,” “Cold Pursuit” and “Honest Thief”), Neeson is back at it, yet again, exposing his “particular set of skills” for the pandemic-released “The Marskman.”
Neeson, much like Nicolas Cage, once upon a time took risks, but he’s now decided that going down the lucrative direct-to-video route was the easiest option at this stage in his career. And it most definitely is lucrative. Neeson has now had two movies top the box-office this pandemic. “The Marksman” was his second #1, after “Honest Thief” in the spring of 2020, opening to the tune of $3.7 million this past weekend.
At this point, the “Taken” formula has been so severely overused that you don’t even need to know what a new Liam Neeson movie will look like — you just get what you pay for and in “The Marksman,” fans will be getting exactly that from the Irish-born actor. In it, Neeson plays Jim, a former Marine who lives a solitary life as a rancher along the Arizona-Mexican border. However, his seemingly peaceful existence gets rattled when he tries to protect a boy (Jacob Perez) on the run from members of a vicious cartel. Enter the aforementioned “set of skills.”
Much like every other Neeson vehicle since 2009, the screenplay in “The Marksman” is undercooked, flirting with, and sometimes attaining, banality with every twist that comes forth. The main gripe I have with many of these Neeson actioneers is that they all feel rushed — the good guys are underwritten and the bad guys are so overwritten that they come off as cartoonish. In “The Marksman,” Neeson seems to be interested in delivering more drama than thrills, and that’s all fine. The film surprisingly courts Western genre sensibilities, but not fully enough.
Neeson is a major draw in foreign countries, with his name being financially structured for overseas audiences, stretching from Asia to the Middle East. And that’s the issue that comes with being Liam Neeson these days. Because his audience stretches far beyond the States and into global territory, narrative risks must be replaced by what world audiences have come to expect from Neeson: Taken-esque theatrics.
Whatever ambitions writer/director Robert Lorenz might have in “The Marksman” are squashed by the inevitable: despite good intentions, the cliches have to eventually take hold, with a predictable dose of self-seriousness. Give me the wink-and-a-nod theatrics that director Jaume Collet-Sera is such an expert at bringing out in Neeson (“Non-Stop,” “Unknown,” “Run All Night”).
Ever since “Taken,” the Irish-born actor has been going down the Nic Cage route by starring in his own brand of revenge-styled thrillers. In all, he’s starred in 15 action-revenge movies in the last 15 years. Of course, he had the time, amidst this chaotic schedule, to star in Martin Scorsese’s contemplatively artful “Silence,” but Neeson has turned into a bonafide easy pay-day conglomerate.
Score: D
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