Directed by Nimrod Antal, Retribution is yet another angry-dad-trying-to-save-his-children movie that Liam Neeson can now do in his sleep. The 71-year-old has been playing this role, mostly well, for the last 15 years after all.
The premise, for any action fan, is exciting. Because it is a bit of a Speed-meets-Locke situation where workaholic father matt Turner (Neeson) is stuck in the family’s luxury SUV with his two disgruntled children Zack (Jack Champion) and Emily (Lilly Aspell), with a pressure trigger bomb under the driver’s seat. Once that is established by a mechanically distorted voice over a strange phone found in the car, the movie mostly plays out inside the car with Neeson being instructed to do some difficult tasks across various locations in Berlin — the first being confiscating the phones of his teenage son and daughter, the son rightly calling him a psycho for the request, and it is the only time the tension feels palpable.
The stakes never feel high enough even though the voice over the phone keeps threatening to blow up the car by remote if Neeson refuses to do something. There is no minimum speed to maintain, no roadblocks to avoid. In fact, Neeson could take a nap in his car if required as long as he didn’t get out of it.
Most of the shots are close-ups of either Neeson’s face or his daughter’s or his son’s. And Neeson, again, does a good job of appearing vulnerable — a guy having the absolutely worst day with a skittish investor, unhappy children who don’t want to have anything to do with him, a wife (a Schindler’s List reunion with Embeth Davidtz) who is meeting a divorce lawyer, and then the bomb. Neeson is also being framed for serial bombings, all to do with his company, across the city of Berlin and he now not only has to make sure his children are safe but also clear his name.
Retribution moves along predictable lines and it becomes less of ‘will he be able to save them?’ and more like a wait for when Neeson’s character snaps and goes from vulnerable Neeson to angry Neeson. It happens when he is asked to kill his boss and friend, played by Matthew Modine. Then there is raging Neeson throwing caution to the winds. When the final reveal happens, there is no ‘oh my god’ moment, just a ‘oh really, how convenient’.
Retribution (we are not sure what the title refers to), which is a remake of the 2015 Spanish film El Desconocido, feels more like an OTT film that can be watched when you don’t have anything better to do rather than a big screen movie, though there might be enough Liam Neeson fans to make the release worthwhile. But one is forced to think if it is finally time for Neeson to retire the angry-dad role and wait for the ones that actually let him show off his pretty neat acting range.
