Mini review: The Marksman

[Casual Observer]

I am fucking obsessed with Liam Neeson's modern action movies. At 70 this guy's beating up and killing more people than anyone. His action movies are pretty much all cookie cutter copies of Taken. He's a grizzled old man with a past and a "particular set of skills" that allow him to (save someone, kill someone, avenge someone, deliver mining equipment over ice, whatever). They're all fun.

This one, he's a widowed rancher on the border and gets in the middle of a cartel hit on a boy and mom whose uncle stole money from them. Cartel guys shoot the mom, her dying wish is Liam get lil Miguel to his fam in Chicago. Standard stuff ensues, cartel guys tracking him, keep finding him, engine trouble, cartel shoots his dog. Ends up with him killing most of the guys at a farm in Oklahoma but the head cartel guy respects Liam in the end before shooting himself. Liam dies of his injuries on a Chicago city bus.

No point picking out stupid writing in this but it's kinda stupid that Liam kept the same truck till the end that the cartel had seen and knew his plates Also there's a scene of him and the kid burning a bag of cartel money, which since Liam was losing his land I'm not sure he would do. But of course it makes sense because he was going to die at the end.

On the Liam scale with "Cold Pursuit" being 10, this gets 4.

[Tdarcos]

I remember watching the opening scenes in the final film in the Dirty Harry franchise, where the two lead characters are playing against type. Liam Neeson is playing a British movie director, who's trying to get his drug-addicted star (Jim Carrey) to do a scene in a music video (Guns 'n Roses Welcome to the Jungle) in which the scene involves him interacting with a woman whose head spins around. The actor is complaining it's a stupid rip-off of The Exorcist, while Neeson says it's "an homage."

The two actors are completely out of character. Carey's part is played strictly as a dramatic performance, and Liam Neeson doesn't kill anyone.