Blacklight (2022)

Directed by: Mark Williams | 102 minutes | action, thriller | Actors: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Taylor John Smith, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Claire van der Boom, Yael Stone, Andrew Shaw, Zac Lemons, Gabriella Sengos, Tim Draxl, Georgia Flood, Caroline Brazier, Mel Jarnson, Sunny S. Walia

We can gradually call Liam Neeson ‘The hardest working man in Hollywood’, because the now almost seventy-year-old Northern Irish actor squeezes out one film after another in his old age. If the one film in which he plays an elderly tough guy has just left the cinemas, then the next, similar film with his name on the role is already on its way. When you deliver films like Neeson on an assembly line (on average two a year), it is almost impossible to maintain a constant level of quality. Most movies are mediocre to say the least, and the peaks down are more common than those up. It doesn’t seem to bother Neeson, the versatile actor who was quite selective in choosing his roles in the past. Although his characters often have a haunted look on their faces and they don’t seem to be enjoying their hard-hitting fight against injustice, Neeson himself seems to be enjoying his unexpected second film career as an aging action hero. As long as he can physically handle it all (he still does most of the stunts himself!) and they keep asking him for these kinds of films, he sees no reason to stop with it.

With director Mark Willams, Neeson previously made ‘Honest Thief’ (2020), about a notorious bank robber who wants to turn himself in to the police, but gets into a fight with two corrupt cops who are after his own profit. Williams apparently does not think too highly of the authorities, because in ‘Blacklight’ (2022) we also see plenty of unreliable agents. This time they work for the FBI, led by Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn). Neeson plays Travis Block, who Robinson remembers from the time they served together in Vietnam and formed a band for life. He works as a “fixer” for the FBI, which means he helps undercover agents who have gotten into trouble. In one of the first scenes we see how this works in practice, when he manages to free an undercover agent who is being attacked by a savage mob of ‘white supremacists’ with a ruse and unscathed. But Travis also turns out to be a family man, who now that he is older, would like to spend more time with his daughter (Claire van der Boom) and granddaughter (Gabriella Sengos).

But Robinson won’t just let him go, we soon discover. He sends him out to take down unhinged undercover cop Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith). Crane wants to make the abuses within the FBI public and, among other things, reveal how the organization is involved in the mysterious death of a clearly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-inspired progressive politician, and the FBI obviously wants to prevent that at all costs. Robinson claims Crane is a junkie who can no longer handle the burden of being an undercover cop and asks Travis to arrest him before he can share his story with journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman). But when Travis finds out that Crane isn’t selling nonsense at all, he teams up with Mira himself to expose the abuses. Much to the dismay of Robinson, who orders Travis’ daughter and granddaughter to be kidnapped. And we all know since ‘Taken’ (2008) what happens when you touch the relatives of Liam Neeson’s character…!

Williams and co-writers Nick May and Brandon Reavis were inspired by the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s, such as ‘Three Days of the Condor’ (1975) and especially ‘The Parallax View’ (1974). Great movies that keep us on the edge of our seats and that will haunt us for a long time to come. But where in those films people of flesh and blood tried to take on the powerful authorities, here we are dealing with an invincible Liam Neeson character; a man, despite his age, easily throws an army of faceless bad guys over his shoulder. You don’t have to expect realism in ‘Blacklight’, nor do you expect difficult moral dilemmas. What you do get is a good dose of action spectacle, with chases (whether or not by car), explosions and guns. An attempt has been made to create some backstory, with a traumatic event in Vietnam as the foundation on which the friendship of Travis and Robinson is hung. Much more could and should have been done with it. The compulsive tendencies and the ever-simmering paranoia in Travis are not enough to deepen the character into a real human being. ‘Blacklight’ looks fine, but the characters and events never get to us at any point. We find Travis sympathetic, by the way; after all, he is played by Liam Neeson. But we quickly forgot about the film itself.