Liam Neeson is finally out of his "Taken" franchise and gets a chance to perform as a human being rather than just act. He's an unlicensed private detective who resigned from the NYPD after accidentally shooting and killing a little girl after drinking. He's since joined AA.
He's hired by a civilized-sounding drug dealer whose wife was kidnapped. The dealer wants to know who they are, since he's paid the ransom and the kidnappers tortured and killed her anyway, cutting her up into little pieces and distributing them in trash bags here and there. Neeson digs into the case a little and finds that two or three men have been doing the same thing for some time -- not just serial killers, but genuine menaces to humanity.
Neesom acquires a kind of acolyte, a black kid who has sickle cell anemia (don't worry; no bathos) and loves private eyes like Sam Spade. Neesom himself plays the role as subdued. Not subdued because he's not bothering to animate the character, but subdued in the sense that he seems like a perfectly normal, if wary, kind of guy. He's not the whirling dervish of the "Taken" movies at all. He can be coshed and beaten painfully and suffer from the beating for hours afterward. (Again, no bathos; this is part of his life.) No love interest, no spectacular shoot outs, nobody's head is wrenched off, no wisecracks. It's a tense and suspenseful movie about a good man trying to do something worthwhile and trying to cope with his weaknesses.
Neesom can be a fine actor given the right role. He has an endearingly lumpy face and his nose begins in the middle of his forehead. It's well worth catching.
He's hired by a civilized-sounding drug dealer whose wife was kidnapped. The dealer wants to know who they are, since he's paid the ransom and the kidnappers tortured and killed her anyway, cutting her up into little pieces and distributing them in trash bags here and there. Neeson digs into the case a little and finds that two or three men have been doing the same thing for some time -- not just serial killers, but genuine menaces to humanity.
Neesom acquires a kind of acolyte, a black kid who has sickle cell anemia (don't worry; no bathos) and loves private eyes like Sam Spade. Neesom himself plays the role as subdued. Not subdued because he's not bothering to animate the character, but subdued in the sense that he seems like a perfectly normal, if wary, kind of guy. He's not the whirling dervish of the "Taken" movies at all. He can be coshed and beaten painfully and suffer from the beating for hours afterward. (Again, no bathos; this is part of his life.) No love interest, no spectacular shoot outs, nobody's head is wrenched off, no wisecracks. It's a tense and suspenseful movie about a good man trying to do something worthwhile and trying to cope with his weaknesses.
Neesom can be a fine actor given the right role. He has an endearingly lumpy face and his nose begins in the middle of his forehead. It's well worth catching.