Liam Neeson
News, Reviews & Features-
Review: Cold Pursuit sees Mr Plow out for revenge in a temperate thriller
Movie Review | Becky Suter | 7th February 2019
Over the past decade, Liam Neeson has had an interesting evolution from Serious Actor to Tough Action Dad, exclusively playing single-minded individuals dispensing their own brand of vigilante justice. Since Taken, he’s developed his particular set of skills to work within the same template over and over again, becoming a one man wrecking crew in the likes of Run All Night, Non-Stop and then Non-Stop-But-On-A-Train, The Commuter. He’s even punched a wolf in the face. All batshit crazy, yet enjoyable nonetheless. But in a recent controversial interview, Neeson revealed he was once almost in his own version of American History X, contemplating taking a cosh to any “black bastard†who crossed his path to quench his own insatiable thirst for revenge. His telling of this story was probably intended to highlight how revenge never helps anyone, but instead highlighted that this is a reality for black men and people of colour, and attempts to rationalise these thoughts could be seen, at best, as attempts to normalise racism. And to think, my main concern before seeing the film was how many snow puns and Simpsons’ gags I could shoehorn into this review.
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Review: Widows delivers an effective, grief-stricken social drama with thrills
Movie Review | Matt Looker | 16th October 2018
Steve McQueen’s dramatically weighty take on the heist movie genre starts with a blistering opening scene. We see masked robbers fleeing their crime mid-pursuit, but only from inside the back of their getaway van. With a fixed position looking out through the transit’s rear, its broken doors scraping and sparking on the road as police cars and traffic crash and pile-up in the trail of the gang’s escape, we cut to each of the members in moments of domesticity from earlier that day - Liam Neeson passionately kissing Viola Davis in bed, Jon Bernthal prodding at the black eye adorning Elizabeth Debicki’s face, kisses goodbye, arguments in stores - until finally a chaotic shootout leaves the gang and their van exploded in flames. McQueen’s intent is clear: from the physical chaos on the roads to the emotional distress at home, these robbers are leaving a lot of devastation in their wake.
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I don't know about you but I'm reading that Liam Neeson horse story again
Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 15th October 2018
This is it. This is the content I crave. The world is a horrible place, full of racist demagogues and insidious politicians and hordes of idiots and hurricanes, but the news that Liam Neeson thinks a horse recognised him from a previous movie somehow makes everything okay. Liam Neeson doing horse whispering is the salve on the gaping wound that is 2018. Shhhh. Everything is going to be fine. Let's read it again, together.
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The Commuter
Movie Review | Ali Gray | 18th January 2018
Every January, Liam Neeson is parachuted into the mid-awards season slump, his brand of no-nonsense, cut-and-dried-in-90-minutes action thrills the perfect antidote to sludgy Oscar bait and the subsequent melange of self-consuming hot takes. His enemies are not the vaguely Eastern European drug dealers and criminals he fights on screen; his real opponents are Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Greta Gerwig. We cannot overlook the importance of having trashy movies exist alongside important movies: films like The Commuter are crucial to balance out the cinematic chi. Though Neeson's latest run-and-gunner will come and go in a single weekend, leaving nary a trace until he releases the exact same movie next January, it is an essential addition to your awards season watchlist. The Commuter should not be Taken 4: Granted.
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LFF 2016: A Monster Calls
Movie Review | Matt Looker | 8th October 2016
It's a tricky thing to underpin the emotional core of your movie with a giant CGI monster. Hypothetically speaking, you could have a massive tree creature offering support to a little boy coping with his mother's terminal illness and, every time he walks away, some members of the audience might get distracted by the behemoth's huge bark-buttocks chafing with every step. Hypothetically speaking.
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Liam Neeson does great impression of road sign in first Taken 3 still
Movie News | Ali Gray | 23rd September 2014
That's it, Liam! Stoop! Bend! Be black! Be pointy!
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A Walk Among The Tombstones
Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 20th September 2014
There comes a point where you just have to say, OK: we've got enough single-minded vigilante killing machines in cinema. We don't need another. That point for me was the three weeks between seeing A Walk Among The Tombstones and The Equalizer, more of which next week. Liam Neeson's latest is much like a lot of his other post-Taken output: you don't need it particularly, but it's there and it does what it's supposed to.
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Liam Neeson enjoys uneventful flight
Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 30th June 2014
Actor Liam Neeson, star of exciting action movies like Non-Stop, Unknown and the Taken series, enjoyed a perfectly ordinary flight from London to New York yesterday, with no major incidents reported, much to the disappointment of passengers and staff.
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A Million Ways To Die In The West
Movie Review | Matt Looker | 29th May 2014
It's a tired opinion, but Seth MacFarlane really does only appeal to fans of Seth MacFarlane… of which, I imagine the number one fan is Seth MacFarlane. Such is the extent of the lazy self-indulgence at work here, resulting in a film that misfires as many times as its title suggests. A Million Ways To Die In The West? I don’t have enough space here to list every single one, but here are the highlights.
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Non-Stop
Movie Review | Ali Gray | 28th February 2014
In the final shot of Non-Stop – spoiler alert – Liam Neeson attempts to crack a smile. It does not look like the smile of a happy man. The poor guy has just spent the last 106 minutes with his face contorted into a permanent grimace; his 61-year-old body presumably ravaged with pain. This is Liam Neeson's life now: playing action hero and paying the physical price. He is now professionally angry and exclusively achy. He's not so much an actor as he is an unofficial Expendable. It's sad to see a once-great actor like Neeson reduced to slugging his way through cheesy B-movies, but Non-Stop at least has the decency to be appropriately ludicrous – and Neeson at least gets to sit down for a bit in this one.
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