Retribution: review of the groovy film by Nimrod Antal

As for thrillers with main characters Liam Neesonwe have long learned to moderate expectations. guilty pleasure this could be a good compromise, especially since in recent years they have become the exception rather than the rule. The problem is that the Northern Irish actor, unlike (for example) Nicolas Cage, has tendency to take oneself too seriously.

Play every role with authority typical of Oskar Schindler, and it turns films that could have been merely “fun” into tedious tests of endurance.

Based on just a few sentences of premise, Retribution appears to be the kind of film that could challenge Liam Neeson’s B-movie tendencies. Remember a little Speed and with the right director, it can provide 90 minutes of mindless entertainment.

Unfortunately, Nimrod Antaldespite a promising filmography, somehow out of tune with the main character and as a result the film loses what it could have been. There are so many ways this could have worked, but none of them were accepted by the director.

Instead of, we choose a boring and uncreative approach, resulting in Liam Neeson giving perhaps the worst performance of his career. Imaginereplay what Schindler infused at the end of Steven Spielberg’s classic applies to the entire feature film, and you’ll get a rough idea of ​​what he’s doing in Retribution.

For Retribution to work, it requires viewer participation. Here because SpeedAs absurd as it was, it was a huge success. We loved Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and we hated Dennis Hopper. Moreover, in that era in Hollywood, few people knew how to create dynamic action scenes better than Jan de Bont.

In Retribution, we don’t really care about any of the characters – they’re all uninteresting 2D avatars – and Nimrod Antal doesn’t have the budget to do much more than pay for a couple of explosions.

Given the premise, it’s shocking that the film offers so little emotion. It’s about remake of the 2015 Spanish film. (Descanocido – Clash), and before that there were already German and South Korean versions – perhaps some (or all) superior to them.

As the opening scenes show, shady middleman Matt Turner (Neeson) is best at what he does: convincing investors to stick with his company’s funds even when they appear to be losing money.

One morning, while transporting his children, rebellious teenager Zach (Jack Champion) and her younger sister Emily (Lilly Aspell), at school, Matt receives a mysterious call on his cell phone saying that there is a bomb in the car and that if he or his children try to get out, it will explode.

The caller states that he is monitoring Matt and will detonate the device remotely if his instructions are not followed. To prove he’s serious, he blows up two more cars and then sends Matt on a scavenger hunt that includes meeting his best friend and colleague Anders Mueller (Matthew Modine), and features his wife Heather (Embeth Davidtzanother veteran Schindler’s list).

Soon the Berlin police begin an investigation and the officer in charge is Angela Brickman (Noma Dumezweni), contacts Matt, who he believes is a serial terrorist. But as long as cell phones work, he can’t stop the car to talk to her, and he certainly can’t get out of it.

Reward screams “straight to DVD” however, for some reason Lionsgate decided to distribute it in American theaters (who knows, in Italy…). This is likely due to both the number of theaters available and Liam Neeson’s proven ability to attract moviegoers (which has declined since he abandoned the legacy franchise). Taken).

Even here, we’ve seen some of Bruce Willis’ late-career films that were never shown in multiplexes, and many of them were more watchable than this anyway. The most shocking aspect of Retribution may not be the lack of interoperability, but the fact that the acting is equally bad.

It is sad to say that in a film starring Liam Neeson, Matthew Modine and Embeth Davidtz, the best performance was the role of fifteen-year-old Lilly Aspell, whose most notable role was the role of young Diana in Amazing woman Patty Jenkins.

It’s time to face the fact that Liam Neeson, for some reason he put his bank account ahead of his creative aspirations. It’s his choice, but it doesn’t make the cinematic experience worthwhile for those for whom his name is associated with a certain degree of quality.

However, “Retaliation” feels especially disappointing because of its untapped potential, enough to make it at least a fair primetime product on Italia 1.

Below you will find international trailer Retaliation:

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