Film Review - Retribution
Images courtesy of StudioCanal.
Few things in cinema are as certain as the Liam Neeson action movies released at least once or twice a year for the past decade and a half. Since starring in Taken in 2008, Neeson has been in sixteen of these, to the point it’s sort of becoming a subgenre itself within the subgenre of “old man action” films that Taken itself defined, alongside franchises like The Expendables, RED, and The Equalizer, which recently released its third film. Typically these films are fairly run of the mill action movies with generic titles that have the bare minimum, best enjoyed with your dad, a drink, and your brain turned off for two hours. More often than not these would be bargain bin direct-to-DVD movies, but Neeson’s name gets them elevated to theatrical releases with meaty mid-level budgets that make them easily profitable.
The latest in this subgenre is Nimród Antal’s Retribution, a remake of 2015 Spanish film El desconocido. We follow Matt Turner (Neeson), a financier at a big corporation on his way to drop his kids, Zach (Jack Champion) and Emily (Lilly Aspell), off at school. The film opens with an introduction that clearly wants to get us into Matt’s car as quickly as possible while still attempting to establish the relationships at play; he’s too distant, his kids don’t respect him and his wife doesn’t feel that loving spark anymore, tried and true motivations within the action genre to make the seemingly impotent protagonist get that angering fuel to see his hellish ordeal to the end.
A mysterious phone rings, he answers, and is informed by a modulated voice that there is a bomb in his car that’s set to go off if he leaves his seat, unless he listens to the demands of this malevolent stranger. In order to show that he’s not messing around, the stranger blows up a car containing one of Matt’s trusted co-workers, which in turn implicates Matt as terrorist suspect #1. What follows is a series of further twists and turns, some fairly predictable and others quite unexpected, as Matt tries to identify the bomber while protecting his children, attempting to save his ailing marriage, and avoiding capture by the authorities.
This story is pretty standard fare for Neeson, in fact it’s not dissimilar to his 2014 film Non-Stop, which follows an air marshal on a plane tracking down a terrorist killing innocent people, while communicating with them over a mobile phone. Retribution is also similar in nature to Steven Knight’s 2014 film Locke, in that it’s largely set in the confines of a car. Everything is from the point-of-view of Mark, there isn’t a single scene without his involvement, and we can only see what he sees. Unlike Locke, which only has Tom Hardy on screen and has its cameras mounted solely on the car, Retribution captures everything with slick action-ready camera work, both within and outside of the car. This showcases some impressive practical car stunt work, utilising the location smartly, weaving in and out of traffic in the narrow roads of Berlin.
Like most of these kinds of action movies, Retribution is at its strongest when it moves into the second act. This is when the action is in full swing, with plenty of moments of genuine tension, pulling off its car chases with precision in service of the limitations put upon itself. Instead of going big and over-the-top, the tension is brought in by the cramped space of the car, the seemingly ever-present police, and the literal “bomb under the table”.
Standout sequences include a moment at a power plant where the faceless villain attempts to convince Mark to kill his best friend Anders (Matthew Modine), or the awkward silence in the car when it’s revealed that Mark’s wife Heather (Embeth Davidtz) is visiting a divorce attorney. The most lacklustre moment is the interrogation once the police corner the car, a Europol agent (Noma Dumezweni) who can’t seem to decide if she’s on Mark’s side, and when all seems lost and there’s no making it out, the film remembers it’s an action movie and there’s still a villain to apprehend, so of course Mark has to take the duty into his own hands.
One of the strongest features of Retribution is the disembodied voice on the other end of Mark’s phone, toying with Mark and never letting him forget who’s in control. Mark is a very helpless protagonist for the majority of the story, where all he can do is watch everything in his life unravel and literally explode. The villain feels like a genuine threat until their identity is revealed, delivering an underwhelming twist and making everything beforehand feel pointless. Unfortunately the ending leaves a lot to be desired, though suspension of disbelief is to be expected in these kinds of movies, they definitely wrote themselves towards a dead end in order to get Liam Neeson out of the situation in a ridiculous, albeit still pretty cool, explosive finale.
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Retribution is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.