Briarcliff Entertainment
The first attempt to make Liam Neeson into an Unlikely Action Star was the surprise hit Taken, which utilized Neeson’s strengths (intimidating voice and size, reasonable athleticism for his age) and hid his weaknesses (camera angles and quick editing shots hid the stunt doubles). Many movies with him since have tried to unsuccessfully copy that hit, including the lesser Taken sequels — the only movie that truly subverted this wasn’t even really an action movie at all, which was the great 2011 film The Grey. But they keep trying.
Blacklight comes from director Mark Williams, co-written with Nick May — and this is certainly their sort of oeuvre. The movie starts with a speech by a political activist that’s a thinly veiled reference to AOC (Mel Jarson) — and although it’s clichéd, it’s an interesting character. Of course, in the next scene she’s killed in what seems to be a hit and run — but naturally there’s more to it than that.
Liam Neeson plays ‘Travis Block’ which might be a joke, but it’s hard to say, and he’s a ‘fixer’ and FBI Agent in that vague movie way that an agent can mean nearly anything. He gets his orders directly from a crusty old cliché FBI Director (Aidan Quinn), who spouts a bunch of right-wing nonsense about SJWs and safe spaces. At the same time, Travis’s daughter (Claire van der Boom) is highly reticent about this dangerous (and murderous) man being near his granddaughter, even though Travis tries his best in very stupid ways (like giving the kid a taser).
The actual story of the movie ties back to that hit job on the AOC-copy Sofia — it turns out that a different FBI agent named Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith) was ordered to kill Sofia (I assume because she had dangerous anti-establishment ideas and the FBI Director requires the status quo) but he refused to do so. Instead he’s trying to leak the story to reporter Mira (Emmy Raver-Lampman) while at the same time Travis is ordered to keep the story from being leaked.
The interesting angle here is that obviously Travis is actually not a good person at all, working at the behest of a legal criminal and the movie slightly takes time to consider this — not to a super deep level, of course, but it at least touches on it. Otherwise it’s fairly standard action-lite stuff — first Travis is against Dusty and then maybe they work on the same side and then new, more evil FBI agents show up as the newer foes to fight.
The action itself never really gets elevated beyond simply ‘watchable’ while the story wants to be something subversive and clever and cool without ever really hitting any of those notes. Liam Neeson still has that presence, even if he clearly can’t do some of the same action scenes anymore (not that I would expect him to) — honestly I’d have preferred to see more introspection from him, because as an actor he’s completely capable of that depth.
Unfortunately the movie’s script isn’t really capable of thinking so deeply, which leaves it all feeling a bit forgettable and disposable — it’s what I would call ‘watchable but not unwatchable’, like maybe it’d be a decent airplane movie. I have nothing but respect for Liam Neeson, though, so if he wants to keep trotting out these movies with a few very occasional great ones, I wish him all the best.
Blacklight has a run time of 1 hour 44 minutes and is rated PG-13 for strong violence, action and language.
Share this post
