BLACKLIGHT (2022) * ½

Liam Neeson stars as a “fixer” named Travis Block who retrieves Federal agents from the field after they’ve been compromised.  He’s trying to retire from the life to spend more time with his grandkid, but his obviously evil boss Robinson (Aidan Quinn) ropes him into doing one more job.  When his protegee (Taylor John Smith) tries to blow the whistle on Robinson, he’s gunned down in the street by shadowy government agents.  It’s then up to Neeson and a reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) to join forces to bring Robinson down.  

The opening action sequence of Blacklight was worrisome.  It contained a lot of Shaky Cam and was pointlessly edited to shreds.  Seriously, it’s 2022 and we’re still doing this shit?  I know Liam Neeson has been making the same movie again and again for the past fifteen years, but there’s no reason to keep editing them the same way they did back in 2007.

Fortunately, the ADHD editing and camerawork settled down shortly thereafter.  That’s mostly because the action pretty much dries up too.  Aside from one OK scene where a dump truck tosses a speeding car at Neeson, it’s rather dull.  The finale, where Neeson goes Home Alone on a bunch of gunmen begins promising enough, but it soon reveals itself to be a weaker, less imaginative imitation of scenarios you’ve seen countless times before (which pretty much sums up the movie itself).  

The most laughable scene occurs when Neeson is late picking up his granddaughter from school.  When he arrives at the classroom, she tells him everyone went home and she’s the only one left in the entire building!  I’m asked to suspend disbelief in movies all the time, but I refuse to accept that any educator would leave a child alone, unattended in a school.  I mean not even the janitor is there?  What did the teacher expect her to do, lock up before she left?

Like many Neeson movies, they give him a character quirk.  Remember how he couldn’t remember in Unknown?  Or when he was a recovering alcoholic in A Walk Among the Tombstones?  Well, here he has OCD, which means he starts to do things two or three times before he actually does them.  Maybe if he looked at the script two or three times, he would’ve noticed how bad it was and passed on the movie.