Blacklight

One of the worst of Liam Neeson’s “man with a particular set of skills" movies, Blacklight operates on the assumption that viewers have either never seen an FBI thriller or crave the most cliché elements imaginable from that genre.

Reuniting his The Honest Thief director, Mark Williams, Neeson gets up to his same old Taken-esque tricks as Travis Block, an expert at getting The Bureau out of sticky situations. Threatened with a department-wide honey-coating in the form of young agent Crane (Taylor John Smith, Sharp Objects) threatening to expose the sanctioned deaths of “problematic” U.S. citizens, FBI Director Robinson (Aidan Quinn) brings in his longtime pal Block to clean up the mess.

The resulting action oscillates between impressive practical stunts on busy city streets and suspect CGI explosions that wouldn’t make the cut in a middle school computer class. Williams also randomly inserts a bizarre shaky visual effect that’s apparently meant to mirror Block’s POV, yet never actually hampers his activities nor receives an explanation.

Into this danger zone steps investigative journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy), to whom Crane leaks enough nuggets to make her a problem. Between their insistence that the government is (gasp!) up to no good and a personal desire to step back from the job and finally be a proper father and grandfather, Block suddenly grows a conscience and must decide where his loyalties truly lie.

Moviegoers unable to guess what route he chooses likely fall into the two camps mentioned in the opening graph of this review, and are also better suited to weather the hammy performances and laughable resolutions that weigh down an already uninspired premise.

With the exception of The Grey and A Walk Among the Tombstones, these Neeson action/thrillers have always been disposable entertainment, but several — namely the actor’s collaborations with Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop; The Commuter; Run All Night) — are crafted with visual aplomb and so well-paced that their throwaway nature evaporates.

Those qualities are all but absent in Williams’ latest effort, which consistently feels like a poor imitation of the best from Neeson’s late-career renaissance instead of trying to be its own thing. 

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment)