Film Review: Blacklight
Images courtesy of Rialto Distribution.
Just several months shy of turning 70, Liam Neeson is still a big Hollywood action star. He may not have wanted to be or started off as one but his latest flick, Blacklight, proves he’s still got it.
Born in 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Neeson fell in love with drama while attending school and performing various plays and productions.
Liam’s career breakthrough came in late 1992. After seeing him perform on Broadway, Steven Spielberg offered him the role of Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. The film brought Neeson numerous awards and further high-profile roles in films.
However, it was not until 2008 at the age of 56, Liam Neeson reinvented himself as a leading man in big budget action films, playing the retired CIA operative Bryan Mills in the Taken trilogy.
Throughout the series he is either saving his daughter or his wife from sex traffickers or terrorists.
It became a major hit and propelled Liam into even further stardom. With its well-choreographed fights and action scenes and of course the famous “I have a very particular set of skills” and “I will find you and I will kill you,” quotes by Neeson, entered the world of pop culture and parody.
Hollywood loved it so much that they even let Neeson play variations of his Taken persona.
He made Run All Night, Non-Stop, The Commuter and The Marksman. All are inspired by the Taken trilogy where he often plays a loveable, bumbling, overprotective father who also is a one-man army: either a highly trained special operative or a CIA Agent or a former soldier suffering from PTSD whose family is in danger. Take your pick.
In his latest film Blacklight, Neeson plays Travis Block, a damaged former Vietnam War soldier that suffers from OCD. As in previous movies by Neeson, Travis is a divorcee who is also an over caring and over protective father towards his daughter Amanda, played by Claire van der Boom and his young granddaughter, played by Gabriella Sengos. His OCD also affects his personal relationship with Amanda, going as far as installing security cameras at her house without her permission or counting every possible entry point at his granddaughter’s birthday venue in case of terrorists.
Travis Block is a highly trained, off-the-books FBI operative who is ready to retire to spend more time with his family. His work involves rescuing agents whose identities have become compromised in hostile and dangerous situations.
While working, Travis discovers a corrupt program named Operation Unity that is targeting both ordinary and high profile citizens for reasons known only to his boss, the unethical FBI director Gabriel Robinson, also a Vietnam vet played by Aidan Quin.
His suspicions are raised further when a fellow FBI agent, turned whistleblower, Dusty Crane, played by Taylor John Smith is shot dead by FBI contractors while trying to leak this information to newspaper journalist Mira Jones, (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Mira becomes an unlikely ally to Travis’s mission in exposing the truth of his crooked boss and former friend who kidnaps his daughter and granddaughter.
This is where the Taken fatigue comes in. As per usual, Neeson’s family is in danger or being held hostage and only he can save the day. It feels like Neeson’s recent filmography is moving in a Steven Seagal-esque fashion, continually churning out action film after action film, all with entirely similar plots. The Blacklight screenplay felt like it was written on autopilot. It’s time now for Neeson to hone his particular set of skills to another genre.
Blacklight is co-written and directed by Mark Williams who also previously directed Neeson in the recent releases Honest Thief and The Marksman. Neeson stated during interviews that he fell in love with Melbourne, the film having been shot almost entirely in the city during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and filmed at notable landmarks such as Crown Towers and the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre.
Neeson has managed to churn out four movies in the last two years despite global lockdowns that caused major filming and production delays.
Blacklight certainly delivers on entertaining the audience and gives us the Liam Neeson action thriller flick that we have loved since Taken in 2008. However, nearly fourteen years have passed since then and the Liam Neeson over protective father/special ops/Rambo type guy is beginning to wane just a little.
Blacklight is now open in cinemas nationally.