I thought we were done with Liam Neeson as an action star? Neeson has been struggling to keep up for the last decade and it makes sense seeing how he is almost 70 years old trying to be an ass-kicker. 

‘Taken’ was 14 years ago. Watching Neeson in these films in 2022 is almost as embarrassing as watching Bruce Willis in any movie in 2022. Here is the latest Neeson beat ’em up called ‘Blacklight’.

The film begins with a progressive activist Sofia Flores who is giving a speech in Washington D.C. about women’s equality, racial equality, and how bad capitalism is…In other words, she’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But in a funny twist, Flores is run down and killed after the speech because someone in our intelligence agencies sees an attractive young Hispanic woman shouting progressive far-left nonsense as a threat to national security.

Now while it would be great if we lived in a society where the FBI feared communists as much as they fear working-class white parents with truck horns, I think we all know that we are about to enter the Bizarro world of reality when it comes to this film.

Lo and behold, the very next scene involves a trailer park full of white supremacists with Confederate flags and guns hunting down a female FED…normally I would tune out of a film like this but then I realized we were only 5 minutes into the film so I decided to stick around and see just how off the wall it would be. However, the first opening minutes are about as exciting as this film is going to get.

Turns out some fed named Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith) was in love with Flores but when the FBI wanted her dead, he refused to do his job. Now he is trying to get the attention of Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who is a progressive activist/journalist working for the film’s version of The Washington Post who wants to expose the conspiracy of the government killing Flores. Liam Neeson then comes in to protect Crane from himself but gets caught up in the mess.

Blacklight is an absolute parody of a film because it is so low budget it almost hurts. Neeson doesn’t take any bumps because the heavy lifting is done by his stunt double who is half his age. The story is painted by numbers, no attempt is made to change up the style for the sake of standing out. It is always eye-rolling when you have a character who has been in a three-letter agency for decades and somehow can’t comprehend that the agency they work for could be corrupt. 

The movie even operates from the outdated idea that journalists are out here risking their lives to expose the truth like this is the 1960s or something. At the end of the day, the film never capitalizes on its absurd set up and it takes about 80 minutes before you get the action movie you are sold on.

‘Blacklight’ is so bad it’s good for about 5 minutes, then it just sucks.

 

1/5

 

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