Society Reviews

The novelty of action star Liam Neeson is dead.

People loved Taken…that was 12 years ago, times have changed. Move On.

Watching one Taken clone after another in the last 10 years trying to recreate the magic of Bryan Mills’s phone call as the nearly 70-year-old actor gets older has gone from sad to put the dog down depressing.

But Hollywood isn’t ready to give up on Liam as an action star and Open Road Films presents the 2nd Liam action film in the last 3 months…The Markman.

In this film, Neeson plays a retired US Marine named Jim Hanson. Jim works with local border patrol agents at the Arizona-Mexico gate to report illegal aliens crossing into the states. One day, a hapless mother and her son try to escape from Mexico after a ruthless drug cartel hunts them down. They manage to meet Jim at the border but the mother loses her life in the process. With a pack of dangerous individuals chasing them on US soil, Jim must escort the young boy to Chicago before they both end up six feet under.

2020 was a rough year for cinema and The Marksman is not getting the industry back on the right track in 2021. The film is stuffed with tired clinches that use melodrama to manipulate its emotion to the viewer. Characters don’t use any common sense to move the plot in a thoughtful way. Instead, they make baffling decisions such as refusing to tell law enforcement that a dangerous foreign cartel is sitting outside of their headquarters. Other red herrings include Jim showing concern about his home being taken by the bank and being desperate for money…only for his home to burn down about 20 minutes in.

At one point, Jim comes across a large bag of cash and yet continues to use his credit cards which allows the cartel to follow him across several states, this is the film’s only creative solution for advancing the plot. The Marksman’s purpose is to create sympathy for “asylum seekers” on an issue that is two years past when leftists pretended to care about it. There are a couple of indirect references to Trump that blame him for the problems at the border which is not the first time there have been cringe-inducing leftist jabs in a Liam Neeson film.

The Marksman is about as believable as Great Value brand products being sold at your local gas station. January 2021 is off to a piss poor start when movies like this set the tone for the year.

 

1/5

 

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