Starting with the positives, what I liked most about this film is the cast. Liam Neeson is good enough in this film but I'll have more to say later on. Kate Walsh I haven't seen her in a lot stuff but she plays a very good character who makes smart decisions and is not pushed to the side as the damsel in distress love interest. Jai Courtney is good as the main villain and it's always nice to see Robert Patrick in this film as well. I also really liked Anthony Ramos character. He's not your cliched one dimensional villain who actually has some morals for what happens in the film.
The action is also very good as well. There's some good enough fight scenes when they happen, there's a good car chase scene and I really liked the final conclusion to the film. It requires the main protagonist using his set of skills (sorry I couldn't resist) to stop Jai Courtneys villain and it's a clever and humorous way to climax everything.
Finally, theres a really cute dog in this film and I just loved it when the dog made an appearance.
Onto the mixed aspect of the film and the big thing to talk about is Liam Neeson. Now I love him and I enjoyed him in this film but I think it's time he stopped doing action films. Its clear he's getting older now and it's getting hard to buy him as someone who can handle himself in a fight. There's scenes where you see he's running like he's trying to keep up and it strains credibility when you later see him falling from buildings and scaling fences. Its frustrating I've come to saying this and the action franchise helped reinvent his career but like Harrison Ford doing another Indiana Jones film, I don't think I want Liam Neeson doing another action film unless it's a really good one.
Onto the negatives now and it's really the script for this film. I just couldn't buy the main characters motivations for handing himself in to the cops and even the way he does it. He meets a woman, wants to spend the rest of his life with her and decides to hand himself in for a life of honesty. That, for me, felt like a really weak motive and just raises a lot of questions. I think it would be more interesting if his girlfriend was his partner in crime who died doing a job and filled with regret and despair, decided to hand himself in after deciding there's nothing left for him. Or something along those lines.
Also he decides to call up the police station and confess all his crimes then. At first that didn't bother me but then it's clear they're not taking him seriously. Why not go down and provide them with evidence to convince them. All this just felt like first draft script that wasn't thought through properly.
Also the tone is very inconsistent. Its an action film but there's odd humour placed in and there's some really drawn out melodramatic scenes that makes this film feel like a romcom as well. The dialogue is also just really hard to take seriously as well during these sort of scenes we listen to liam Neeson tell his girlfriend he doesn't like her health cookies and how much he loves her.
Overall, this is a decent enough film that delivers what you're looking for but it's heavily flawed with bad script issues and tone inconsistencies.
🌟🌟🌟
No comments:
Post a Comment