August 29, 2023
Matt Turner (Liam Neeson) was a very busy fund manager who had very strained relations with his wife Heather (Embeth Davidtz) and their two children, teenager Zach (Jack Champion) and preteen Emily (Lilly Aspell). One morning, he reluctantly accepted a request from Heather that he be the one to bring the kids to school. Along the way, an unfamiliar ring tone began to ring from inside the armrest.
When Matt answered the phone, a strange male voice on the other line told him that their car had been booby-trapped with bombs. These bombs were weight-sensitive, all activated when they took their seats. The minute it detects that Matt or the kids had gotten out of their seats, the car would explode. Matt was threatened that he should follow all the orders given to him, that is, if he wanted his family to live.
Since his sleeper box-office hit "Taken" (2008) at age 56, nary a year passed by that Liam Neeson did not have action-thriller in the can. These were usually B-grade and forgettable, but Neeson just kept on doing them even up to now, doing physical stunts even with his advancing age. Mercifully, "Retribution" had no running and fighting for 71-year old Neeson, just keeping him in the driver's seat of his car the whole time.
This movie was practically all Neeson's show in close-up as he kept a conversation running with the unknown entity on the phone. There were some interactions with the annoying kids at the back of the car, and his unhappy wife Heather with her issues. There would be some high-stress encounters with a couple of Matt's co-workers along the way, his boss Anders Muller (Matthew Modine) and colleague Sylvain (Arian Moayed).
The trailer reminded me of another film about a bomb in a moving vehicle, "Speed" (1994), but the full film did not exactly turn out that way. Of course, this whole scheme would also be about money, but the bomber this time was demanding a much, much higher monetary settlement than the $3.5M in "Speed." Like other recent Neeson thrillers, it was good for a quickie thrill, but hardly anything will register afterwards. 5/10.
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