Another year, another Liam Neeson generic action film. While Taken still to this day is a great film, you could also say that it has ruined Neesons career from it. Since the trilogy of films has been released it stuck Neeson in a role of leading actor man that sadly just gets worse over time. Be it bad scripts, the same role every movie, or that with his age growing each film features less action by him, Blacklight continues the downward spiral of his filmography.
Travis Block (Liam Neeson) is an ex FBI agent that was used to save and recover those in situations that only man with a particular set of skills could do (sound familiar). Upon learning of a rogue agent though he soon realizes that maybe the ones he worked for weren’t the good guys he thought they were.
This story is about as cut and dry as you could get. Theres nothing deep in it, no twists, and plays about as run by numbers as you could expect. As with his last few films we can’t even expect the same fun action scenes that we grew to love with him in the Taken series. Bland car chases, boring shoot outs, and lifeless hand to hand fights where its questionable is Neeson is even there (which I doubt he isn’t). Neeson in these late run of movies is almost trying to compete with Steven Seagal for who to put on a more lifeless performance.
For some reason as well the film decides to ramp it up with a twist for the end that makes no sense other than to maybe further comparisons to Taken. It comes off as just an added measure to fill this to a full length movie.
Blacklight continues the trend for Liam Neeson of just soulless, cash grab, filler films. Its instantly forgettable and not even bad in a fun way. I doubt this’ll be the last of them either.
Score :
1.5 / 5
