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BLACKLIGHT
Director: Mark Williams Cast: Liam Neeson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Aidan Quinn, Claire van der Boom, Tim Draxl, Gabriella Sengos, Yael Stone, Georgia Flood, Andrew Shaw, Zac Lemons, Mel Jarnson MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:48 Release Date: 2/11/22 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 10, 2022 A couple of potentially intriguing ideas exist in Blacklight, but the screenplay by Nick May and director Mark Williams bypasses them, simply to go through the motions of a generic action thriller. The movie isn't particularly engaging or even competent in that more simplistic vein, either. Of the elements with some potential, at the top of that list might be the story's protagonist. He's Travis Block (Liam Neeson), a clean-up man/counsellor of sorts with the FBI, whose missions involve physically and psychologically rescuing undercover agents who have had their covers blown and/or have gotten in too deep. An early sequence introduces us to the man and his job, as he saves an agent who has been discovered by a far-right-wing group in the boondocks. Actually, the sequence is mostly about Travis driving fast in his muscle car (Williams oddly teases the possibility that the character is in the middle of a chase, either because the filmmaker assumes the audience will expect action right away or because the director is too impatient with the notion of a casual drive) and causing plenty of destruction. In retrospect, the script more or less announces its underwhelming intentions from the start. The thing about Travis is that, while he has spent more than a decade saving the lives and minds of other agents, his own life has fallen apart and he has become an obsessive, paranoid mess. His wife left him, and his daughter Amanda (Claire van deer Boom) is reluctant to let him be a significant part of her daughter's life. Travis is thinking of retiring, so that he can be a good grandfather to his granddaughter (played by Gabriella Sengos), but his boss Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), the director of the FBI, argues that Travis is too important in the business of saving the souls of wayward agents. All of this possesses some promise, even if the stuff with the family might as well come out of a cliché handbook. The foundational idea of the character is solid, and that's about as much thought and detail May and Williams have put into their protagonist. The rest of the plot has him running, driving, fighting, shooting, and occasionally explaining some back story between the action beats. Neeson's unenthused performance—to put it generously—primarily exudes a sense of disappointment with the whole affair. Some might perceive it as the actor's boredom of constantly being pigeonholed into such forgettable, throwaway action vehicles as this one. The few scenes of vulnerable, human connection with Amanda or the granddaughter (including an amusing one in which grandpa lays a lot of moral uncertainty on the little girl) certainly don't give Neeson much with which to work, apart from the jogging and the slow, rudimentary fight choreography. The plot has Travis, with the eventual help of journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), uncovering a top-secret program within the FBI that might be responsible for the assassinations of American citizens. At first, Travis doesn't believe Dusty (Taylor John Smith), an undercover agent who claims to have insider knowledge of the conspiracy. After a lot of chases (One involving a garbage truck is especially silly in how obvious it is that Williams wants as much destruction as possible) and lackluster fights (Williams displays an odd, distracting tendency to shake the camera for a second in the middle of action), though, our man gradually comes around to the truth. He then dawdles long enough for more action sequences and the inevitable build-up to a predictable climax—yet another fistfight/shootout—to happen. This conspiracy angle is mildly intriguing, but it, along with the tone of menace and paranoia (which is strange, considering that's one of Travis' only defining characteristics), is overshadowed by the action-heavy plotting. An opening scene, featuring the murder of a progressive politician with a pretty overt connection to a real-life public figure, ultimately feels to be in bad taste, considering how little the movie cares about the politics and real-world antecedents of this scenario (The villain, who won't—only because it's already obvious almost immediately—be named here, references J. Edgar Hoover's overreaches of power and drops a few, familiar political catchphrases, but that's the extent of any detail and depth to the subplot). With its theoretically fascinating hero and sinister conspiracy narrative, Blacklight could have been more. The movie we get, though, struggles even to fulfill its minimal goals. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for strong violence, action and language)
