”It’ll be a cold day in Hell when Liam Neeson does another action mov….oh, crap!”
(2019) Action (Summit) Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Micheál Richardson, Michael Eklund, Bradley Stryker, Wesley MacInnes, Tom Bateman, Domenick Lombardozzi, Nicholas Holmes, Jim Shield, Aleks Paunovic, Glenn Ennis, Benjamin Hollingsworth, John Dornan, Emmy Rossum, Chris W. Cook, Venus Terzo, Dani Alvarado, Julia Jones, William Forsythe, Elizabeth Thai. Directed by Hans Petter Moland
They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Liam Neeson should know; he’s made a living the last decade or two playing aggrieved fathers/husbands/friends kicking the shit out of those who have done him wrong. So it’s kind of fitting that this, what he has said will be his final action role, is set in a Colorado ski resort.
Neeson plays Nels Coxman, the snowplow driver who has recently won a citizen of the year award for the town. However, his civic acclaim hides the fact that the tiny little hamlet has a problem with crime and violence. Nels isn’t immune from it; his son Kyle (Richardson) turns up dead of a heroin overdose. Nels and his wife (Dern) are devastated, but it smells fishy to Nels. His son ever used drugs and Nels would know if he had, right? So he goes on a one man crusade to find out the truth, even if he has to kill every lowlife drug dealer and criminal in town. And there are an awful lot of them.
Moland directed this remake of his own Swedish film In Order of Disappearance from five years ago, and infuses it with an almost satirical, quirky sense of humor – each bad guy that joins the Choir Invisible gets an onscreen tombstone with his colorful gang nickname emblazoned on it. The hits keep getting harder and bloodier and while Neeson thrives with this sort of thing, here he seems oddly low-key.
The big bad is played by Tom Bateman who overacts gleefully and shamelessly. Normally a role like a drug lord named Viking would be ripe for that sort of thing, but Bateman takes it over the line into parody which is no Bueno in a film like this. Action fans will enjoy some particularly grisly deaths, but film fans will A) wonder why Laura Dern is onscreen for all of 90 seconds, and B), how does a snowplow driver turn into a lethal assassin of paranoid gang members. Well, you don’t go to an action film for logic, right?
REASONS TO SEE: Has elements of satire to it.
REASONS TO AVOID: Lackluster action film whose comic jabs don’t always hit the mark.
FAMILY VALUES: There is violence, drug content, sexual references and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Richardson, who plays Neeson’s son, is his son in real life.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Max Go, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/26//20: Rotten Tomatoes: 69% positive reviews. Metacritic: 57/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Peppermint
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
Cinema365 