Liam Neeson does not just play a tough guy, he’s actually been in the military. In his latest film The Marksman Liam plays an ex-marine who is hired to protect a Mexican boy after being forced from the U.S., and takes on groups of drug cartels that seek him out for revenge
MOVIE REVIEW – Liam Neeson’s action picture career shows no signs of slowing down: this time, the 69-year-old actor plays a long-retired Marine who is “protecting” a Mexican youngster with a sniper rifle (the film’s original title was The Sniper). Although Liam Neeson’s cinematic career has a lot of promise, The Marksman is a stale, clichéd road drama with action aspects.
Almost everyone adores Liam Neeson: the 69-year-old Irish actor, who has worked in the film industry for nearly 50 years, consistently delivers consistent, high-quality, and believable performances in every film he’s worked in – and this is especially true of his “protector” type characters, in which he plays an older, wiser mentor, a Jedi Master (like Qui-Gon Jinn), or a parent (Taken) attempting to protect younger film characters who are If you’re looking for a ‘father’ character, there isn’t a finer one on the market right now than Liam Neeson.
The action hero is another recurrent character type for Liam Neeson, who started his cinematic career with the phenomenal success of the Taken films, and the lengthy line of such films has never seemed to run dry since then. The action hero and the elder guardian are often combined in Liam Neeson’s films, so it’s no surprise that this is the case with The Marksman. Here he is guarding a little Mexican youngster.
A broken promise is a debt that has not been paid.
Jim (Liam Neeson) is a retired Marine sharpshooter who fought in Vietnam and now runs a frontier ranch alone after his wife died of illness years ago. A Mexican woman (played by Teresa Ruiz, widely known for her role as Isabella Bautista, the ‘queen’ of the Mexican drug gang in Narcos: Mexico) and her little son Miguel are on the run after being chased by a brutal drug cartel on the opposite side of the border. They pass past Jim’s estate, which is unknowingly entangled into the drug battle and assures the boy’s mother that he would transfer his kid to relatives in Chicago.
The rest is rather predictable: Jim and his dog Jackson set out to bring Miguel to the American capital, while Mexican cartel men chase them. It’s a very standard road movie, with few action moments and little action. Neeson is at his best with his sniper rifle in the most of them, and when he isn’t, it’s clear that the Irish actor is approaching 70 years old.
What makes a decent Liam Neeson action picture, and what makes this one a dud?
Since Taken, Liam Neeson’s action films have been in their own category, and we have high expectations for them. The majority of them are not on par with or in the style of the 1980s and 1990s, but they do have great, fast-paced action sequences reminiscent of the Bourne films, relatively complex characters (including those played by Neeson), an overall twisty, great story, betrayals, and epic final confrontations. Following The Marksman, I watched two earlier Liam Neeson action films on Netflix: Non-Stop from 2014 and Run All Night from 2015 (both of which I highly suggest to any lovers of the genre who haven’t seen them, particularly the second). These two previous Neeson pictures were much superior than The Protector in practically every regard, demonstrating that Robert Lorenz’s final film was a colossal failure.
It’s worth mentioning that Lorenz has mostly worked as a second-unit director with Clint Eastwood, and hasn’t attempted “primary director” work since The Last Screw (which he directed with Eastwood). He was once again in charge of the creative process of a whole production, in addition to managing the second-unit work on The Protector. Despite the fact that Liam Neeson is no Clint Eastwood, the script, co-written with Chris Charles and Danny Kravitz, does not want to stray from the tried and true template. Neeson is much better suited to playing the complex, complex action hero character (like in Run All Night) than the simple, wooden former Marine that any old action hero could play. Plus, you need a dog in the tale because, well, we’ve known since the 1980s that a dog and a boy in a story always works. Neeson’s character has a stale routine, but he’s still capable of so much more – even at 69.
What might a cartel group in Mexico look like? Evil!
As basic as Neeson’s persona is, the Mexican cartel is equally so, and it’s no surprise that superb shows like Breaking Bad and the Narcos series described above: Mexico have spent many seasons focusing on them. The incredibly wicked boss of the group hunting Jim in this film is Juan Pablo Raba, who portrayed Gustavo Gaviria, a more complicated Colombian drug kingpin in the first Narcos. Although he attempts to explain in one moment, during a pretty forced discussion, that he didn’t have much option as a youngster except to join the Mexican cartel, we loathe him so much by that point that no one is going to be impressed by this revelation.
Is it really “non-stop”?
We don’t mind Neeson playing action heroes to death (as he recently said), but we’d like to see the picture, which is also directed by Robert Lorenz, be of higher quality, since the Irish actor is capable of portraying more nuanced parts in better films. This one not only has a dreadfully clichéd plot, but it also has a severe lack of action. On the other hand, at the age of 69, Neeson could be able to gradually return to his more traditional cinematic character dramas since he would be in high demand…
-BadSector-
MOVIE REVIEW – Liam Neeson’s action picture career shows no signs of slowing down: this time, the 69-year-old actor plays a long-retired Marine who is “protecting” a Mexican youngster with a sniper rifle (the film’s original title was The Sniper). Although Liam Neeson’s cinematic career has a lot of promise, The Marksman is a stale, clichéd road drama with action aspects. Almost everyone adores Liam Neeson: the 69-year-old Irish actor, who has been in the film business for over 50 years, always delivers consistent, high-quality, and convincing performances in every film he appears in – and this is particularly true of his…
Liam Neeson plays a former Marine who protects a Mexican boy in The Marksman.
Liam Neeson plays a former Marine who protects a Mexican boy in The Marksman.
2021-11-25
Gergely Herpai (BadSector)
We don’t mind Neeson playing action heroes to death (as he recently said), but we’d like to see the picture, which is also directed by Robert Lorenz, be of higher quality, since the Irish actor is capable of portraying more nuanced parts in better films. This one not only has a dreadfully clichéd plot, but it also has a severe lack of action. On the other hand, at the age of 69, Neeson could be able to gradually return to his more traditional cinematic character dramas since he would be in high demand…
4.5 Direction
Actors have a score of 6.4.
4.2 for the story
Action/Visuals – 5.2
4.8 Ambience
5
AVERAGE
We don’t mind Neeson playing action heroes to death (as he recently said), but we’d like to see the picture, which is also directed by Robert Lorenz, be of higher quality, since the Irish actor is capable of portraying more nuanced parts in better films. This one not only has a dreadfully clichéd plot, but it also has a severe lack of action. On the other hand, at the age of 69, Neeson could be able to gradually return to his more traditional cinematic character dramas since he would be in high demand…
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