Liam Neeson to star in ‘Tough Guy Redemption’

Since 2008 Taken ushered in a surprisingly lasting late-career reinvention for Liam Neeson As a silent star of tough-guy thrillers, often taking down the scoundrels who corrupt his family, it has become the norm to expect more. Especially from an article with a stupid one-word title, for example absolution. This latest variation on the formula has the same key ingredients, but the relatively few bursts of violence are tempered by a melancholic undertone, and the ticking clock is this time internal to the protagonist, identified only in the credits as “The Thug.”

As the title of the post suggests, this is another film in which Neeson takes a break from playing a retired government agent, cop or marine to move into the criminal world. The damage done to his children is caused by his own neglect of parental responsibilities.

Like a forgettable 2022 MemoryIn which the actor portrayed a hitman suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, Neeson plays a man whose abilities are rapidly deteriorating. A former boxer who spent the last 30 years as an enforcer, collecting payments, handling pick-ups and deliveries for the Boston gangster, Thug was diagnosed with an advanced form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an incurable neurodegenerative disease resulting from long-term concussions that began throughout his life. about six years old, probably at the hand of his father.

This leaves him with limited time to deal with his mortality, take an honest look at his many mistakes in life, and make amends with his estranged daughter Daisy (Frankie Shaw). It also means trying to get to know Dre (Terrence Pulliam), the teenage grandson he’s never even met.

The brooding redemption thriller reunites Neeson with Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, with whom he worked on the 2019 remake. Cold Pursuitplaying a Colorado snowplow driver who sets out to avenge the murder of his son by the Denver drug cartel. The film was a mixed bag: watchable, but no match for Moland’s homegrown original. In order of disappearancea stunning Stellan Skarsgård vehicle that more effectively conveyed its mixture of tragedy, bloody violence and biting humor.

Using many of the 2014 film’s key collaborators—notably cinematographer Philip Aagaard, production designer Jørgen Stangeby Larsen, and composer Kaspar Kaae—Moland creates a sharp-looking, fast-paced film with a moody soundtrack.

absolution remains exciting even if Tony Gayton’s script doesn’t always avoid clichés and invention, especially in the final act, which stretches out and covers too much territory. On the other hand, the director’s Nordic sensibility means he spends a lot of time developing the setting and characters and makes little use of sentimentality, imparting a tangible soulfulness and psychological depth that makes you fall in love with the lonely protagonist.

Thug lives in Newton, Massachusetts, an area that still shows his working-class roots. He works for Boston underworld figure Charlie Conner (Ron Perlman), which maintains a respectable reputation with a network of furniture factory stores. (Perlman plays a more serious version of the same character he played in the instantly forgettable Apple TV+ heist. Instigatorsagain with a big fat safe in the office full of dirty money, even though in that movie he was the corrupt mayor of Beantown.)

Although Thug has learned never to question the goods he carries, he becomes a work partner with Conner’s talkative, cocaine-addicted son Kyle (Daniel Diemer), who is nosy and dimwitted enough to make him a liability. Brash and impatient, eager to learn the business to prove his worth to his father, the child becomes irritated by the veteran’s harsh career guidance, leading to unpleasant consequences later on.

Thug enters into a lukewarm romance with a fellow unnamed character referred to as The Woman (Yolonda Ross) after knocking out her abusive boyfriend with one punch at a local bar. She’s younger, but not so much that the relationship is implausible, and she has her own complicated history. She is warm, funny and drawn to him, not intimidated by his rough side or reluctance to show affection.

When Thug’s memory lapses become impossible to ignore—first, he forgets names and addresses, and then more important things as the disease progresses—he sees a neurologist, who gives him, at most, two years before he becomes unable to care for himself. Right after that, he plans to blow his brains out in the car until the face of the kid in the other car changes his mind.

From here on, Gayton’s script focuses on Thug’s criminal activities (including a moment when he witnesses what look like the warning signs of sex trafficking that will come back to haunt him) and his attempts to reconnect with his daughter.

With his son out of the picture for reasons he was shocked to learn about, Daisy and Dre are all he has left. At first she wants nothing to do with him, too hurt by his refusal to trust him again. But he slowly returns to their lives and begins a timid bond with his grandson.

Once you learn that Daisy and Dre have been kicked out of an apartment she can barely afford, you’ll understand where the story is going. But that doesn’t make things any less interesting when Thug begins planning to turn things around, even as his mental health plummets and another, more brutal threat to his life arises. With nothing left to lose, he makes desperate hasty decisions to get what he needs and relieve some of the burden from his conscience.

Neeson brings his usual gravitas and outstanding physique to the role, as well as heaps of anger, pain, regret and a great mustache. He enjoys strong support from Ross as a woman who is both caring and considerably more fragile than she appears at first glance; from Shaw, tough as nails and unwilling to forgive, but not without a heart; and from Pulliam in some beautiful interludes in which you feel the unspoken longing between them – one for some semblance of a father figure, the other for a son with whom he can break the chain of cruelty that began with his own dead father.

The film’s most clumsy missteps are the vivid dream sequences on the water on the fishing boat that was the only good thing about his childhood, an old man (Josh Drennan) glaring at him with hostility as he stood next to the outboard motor. There are too many obvious things in these scenes about the callous masculinity that turns boys into tough men, toughening them up supposedly for their own good. The film is good in its slower scenes.

It’s not there with Greya 2012 survival thriller in which Neeson battles a pack of wolves in the Alaskan wilderness (in my opinion, the best of his post-TV series).Taken canon). But absolution is solid mid-range B-movie entertainment with unexpected emotional punch.

There’s a poignancy to the character study of a career criminal aged by his job, an aspect a surly drug dealer (Javier Molina) feels the need to remind him of, referring to him as “Jurassic” or “Viejo.” He’s a beat-up relic, just like the faded red ’70s Chevrolet sports sedan he drives. If, as he’s hinted in interviews, Neeson is considering stepping away from the heavy roles that made him an action star in his early 50s, it’s nice to see him retiring in brooding mode while still capable of directing some bad guys .