movie review for blacklight

Another season, another “ Liam Neeson Has Skills” movie. Some of the variants of his popular “ Taken ” movies (the last one, “ Taken 3 ,” was all the way back in 2014, how times flies) have been reasonably clever and even cinematically worthwhile on a surprising level (see for instance 2019’s “ Cold Pursuit ”). Mark Williams’ “Blacklight,” alas, is not among them. 

The movie opens with a scene of a young, charismatic brunette female roiling the working class at a D.C. rally. They carry signs bearing her name, Sofia Flores. (The actor playing her is Mal Jarnson.) Given the talk she’s talking here, she’s obviously based on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . In the crowd is a wide-eyed guy fixing his baby blues on her adoringly, apparently her boyfriend, played by Taylor John Smith (in this scene and others looking more like a digital animation than a live person for some reason). So far so familiar. But later that night after the rally, a shady town car driver fakes a jammed passenger-side door, obliging Sofia to exit the car driver’s side, and on the street she’s efficiently plowed down by an SUV. Whose driver shares a meaningful glance with the town car driver. 

One ought not have to invoke former Congresswoman Gabbie Giffords to argue why this kind of “torn from the headlines” (or whatever it is) scenario opportunism is gross. It casts a pall over the rest of the movie, which wouldn’t have much going for it anyway even without this alpha-male posturing. 

Neeson plays Travis Block (writer Nick May musta read a screenwriting manual stating that giving your violent hero Travis Bickle’s initials is a good luck charm of sorts) an undercover even by undercover standards FBI guy who specializes in getting regular undercover agents out of jams. We first see him speeding to a DC-adjacent redneck-white-supremacist conclave to rescue an in-too-deep operative. He achieves this through legerdemain and propane and a flare. In the office of his buddy, FBI Director Gabriel Robinson ( Aidan Quinn , channeling Martin Sheen ’s Josiah Bartlet Gone Bad) tells Travis—who is also his best friend, of course—“I appreciate you for making it happen.”

But the thing Travis most wants to make happen at this late stage in life is quality time with his granddaughter, at which is actual daughter balks. Travis’ paranoia isn’t good for the tot, she complains, just as the tot is opening grandpa’s birthday gift: a flashlight with a built-in taser doo-hickey. In the meantime, Smith’s character turns out to be named Dusty and it turns out that he, too is an undercover agent. One who’s about to spill to a crusading journalist ( Emmy Raver-Lampman ) about his—and the bureau’s—part in the assassination of Flores. 

Block doesn’t buy it at first—decades on the job and he still believes the establishment to be essentially thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Soon, of course, the scales fall from his eyes. And eventually he must confront the man who etcetera etcetera.

The action set pieces are perfunctory. I suppose it’s commendable that they don’t rise, or fall, to the level of chaos cinema but by the same token they’re so lifeless you might find yourself wishing them to. And the script is, gross opportunism aside, dismally threadbare. Robinson’s rationales for his illegal and evil actions don’t even exist; they just are. You know, the villainous forces in ‘70s paranoia classics like “ Three Days of the Condor ” and “ The Parallax View ” at least had an ethos, Donnie. 

Now playing in theaters.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Liam Neeson as Travis Block
• Emmy Raver-Lampman as Mira Jones
• Taylor John Smith as Dusty Crane
• Aidan Quinn as Gabriel Robinson
• Tim Draxl as Drew Hawthorne
• Claire van der Boom as Amanda Block

Writer (story by)

• Brandon Reavis
• Mark Williams
• Michael P. Shawver

Cinematographer

• Shelly Johnson

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Liam neeson in ‘blacklight’: film review.

The veteran action star plays a covert FBI operative who finds himself in conflict with his employer in Mark Williams' thriller.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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It’s amazing that Liam Neeson makes so many action movies, since he always looks so miserable in them.

Such predecessors in the genre as Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood usually projected an air of quiet self-satisfaction when dispatching bad guys. Neeson, on the other hand, always seems emotionally pained while practicing his characters’ particular set of skills, as if to suggest that someone has to do this sort of thing, even an Oscar-nominated actor versatile enough to have played characters as disparate as Oskar Schindler, Rob Roy MacGregor and Alfred Kinsey.

Release date : Friday, Feb. 11

Cast : Liam Neeson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Aidan Quinn, Claire van der Boom, Yael Stone, Andrew Shaw

Director : Mark Williams

Screenwriters : Mark Williams, Nick May

His work ethic, too, is admirable. He reliably pumps out one or two of these genre films every year, like a man racing to beat the clock. And since he’s now 69 years old (although he certainly doesn’t look it), that may be exactly what he’s doing.

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Blacklight , marking his second collaboration with director Mark Williams ( The Honest Thief ), unfortunately proves one of Neeson’s more generic efforts. Lacking a high concept or memorable central character, the film is a by-the-numbers actioner that coasts on its star’s soulful gravitas and low-key charisma. It offers nary a memorable set piece or resonant line of dialogue, except for when Neeson’s character admits at one point, “In hindsight, I suspect I made a poor career choice.”

That character’s name is Travis Block, which would have looked great on the covers of a series of 1960s mass-market paperbacks. Block is a covert operative who freelances for the FBI, specializing in extracting undercover agents who have gotten themselves into dangerous situations. His talents are demonstrated in an opening scene in which he rescues an agent who has blown her cover with an angry mob of white supremacists who look like they’re auditioning for January 6.

Block is, also, of course, a devoted father and grandfather, because what would a Neeson action movie be if he didn’t also have a family to protect? His professional tendencies tend to seep into his personal life, as when he rigorously trains his little granddaughter to look out for possible threats and means of escape. He also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which benefits him in his work but also results in such idiosyncrasies as a refrigerator filled with hyper-neatly arranged rows of fruit and beer bottles. That’s about it in terms of character development.

The plot is set in motion when an FBI agent (Taylor John Smith), suspecting that the agency has murdered a young anti-government activist, attempts to turn whistleblower. He also soon winds up dead, and Block finds himself collaborating with an ambitious investigative journalist (Emmy Raver-Lampan, The Umbrella Academy ) to get to the bottom of the mystery.

It turns out to be a secret and deadly government program dubbed “Operation Unity,” the brainchild of Block’s good friend and boss, FBI director Gabriel Robinson ( Aidan Quinn ). The two men have a decades-long bond, having shared a fateful experience during their time serving together in the Vietnam War.

Cue the inevitable car chases, shootouts and hand-to-hand fights as Block finds himself increasingly at odds with Robinson, especially when his daughter and granddaughter suddenly disappear. As anyone who’s seen a Taken movie knows, it’s not a good idea to mess with Neeson’s progeny.

The film doesn’t provide much in the way of surprises, and anyone who doesn’t immediately suspect that Quinn’s character is up to no good has probably never heard of J. Edgar Hoover. Strangely, Robinson seems to be the least protected FBI director in history, since Block is able to continually show up unannounced, at one point even knocking on his front door. Robinson does, however, at least prove to be media-savvy, loudly complaining, “Nowadays, this country is ruled by ‘gotcha’ moments on Twitter.”

Although Blacklight harkens back to the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s — think The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor — it never achieves their level of narrative momentum or suspense. It mainly serves as a time-filler until the next, better Liam Neeson action movie comes along.

Full credits

Production companies: The Solution Entertainment Group, Sina Studios, Zero Gravity Management, Fourstar Films, Elevate Production Finance Distributor: Briarcliff Entertainment Cast: Liam Neeson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Aidan Quinn, Claire van der Boom, Yael Stone, Andrew Shaw Director: Mark Williams Screenwriters: Mark Williams, Nick May Producers: Mark Williams, Paul Currie, Myles Nestel, Aleve Loh, Coco Xiaolu Ma Executive producers: Dominic Benvenuto, Jim Cardwell, Craig Chapman, Zhe Chen, James Michael Cummings, Craig McMahon, Paul Saleba, Lisa Wilson Director of photography: Shelly Johnson Production designer: Michelle McGahey Editor: Michael P. Shawver Composer: Mark Isham Costume designers: Emma Kingsbury, Katherine Milne Casting: Tom McSweeney, David Newman, Mary Vernieu, Michelle Wade Byrd

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Travis Block is a government operative coming to terms with his shadowy past. When he discovers a plot targeting U.S. citizens, Block finds himself in the crosshairs of the FBI director he o... Read all Travis Block is a government operative coming to terms with his shadowy past. When he discovers a plot targeting U.S. citizens, Block finds himself in the crosshairs of the FBI director he once helped protect. Travis Block is a government operative coming to terms with his shadowy past. When he discovers a plot targeting U.S. citizens, Block finds himself in the crosshairs of the FBI director he once helped protect.

• Mark Williams
• Brandon Reavis
• Liam Neeson
• Aidan Quinn
• Taylor John Smith
• 430 User reviews
• 101 Critic reviews
• 27 Metascore
• 1 win & 1 nomination

Top cast 38

• Travis Block

• Gabriel Robinson

• Dusty Crane

• Amanda Block

• Helen Davidson

• Jordan Lockhart

• Natalie Block

• Drew Hawthorne

• Sofia Flores

• Nationalist Leader
• (as Anthony J Sharpe)

• Bearded Nationalist #2

• Bearded Nationalist #3
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The lowest-rated Liam Neeson action film on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Goofs There are a number of indication that filming is not in the U.S., including right-hand-drive autos and Australian traffic lights, stop signs, and road signs.

Travis Block : You name it, I've probably done it.

• Soundtracks Stronger Than Before Performed by John Coggins Written by John Coggins Courtesy of Formula One Music Publishing Produced by John Coggins

User reviews 430

• WizardOfWhoopee
• Feb 25, 2022
• How long is Blacklight? Powered by Alexa
• February 11, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Instagram
• Under Cover of Darkness
• Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia (Car chase)
• Zero Gravity Management
• Footloose Productions
• Solution Entertainment Group
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $43,000,000 (estimated)
• Feb 13, 2022
• $15,902,207

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 44 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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Blacklight Reviews

Neeson gets the benefit of the doubt one more time.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 10, 2023

All I can say “It Was Fine” I wanted more from this generic action film… & Liam Neeson

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

If you've seen a film with an armed Neeson, the rest. is more or less predictable. Well-filmed chase scenes and dozens of victims. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 29, 2022

I love me a Liam Neeson film. I love his late career resurgence. I love his "special set of skills". But there are no catchphrases for Neeson this time around...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 10, 2022

An absolute disaster. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 15, 2022

Neeson's default setting of furrowed brow and steely-eyed determination are present and correct, and the action sequences are well choreographed, if unsurprising.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 8, 2022

Obviously, Neeson can be a gifted actor, but this genre has not been the arena to display that talent, and by this point, the tried and true methods that would normally sustain a film like this are wearing thin.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jun 8, 2022

Never comes close to being interesting or entertaining. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

The best way to sum up this movie is that I still have no idea why the title is Blacklight.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 10, 2022

A few of Neeson's films in this "last action hero" mode have been good, but the running-on-empty Blacklight is the worst one yet.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 6, 2022

Blacklight snaps back to the kind of cartoon conspiracy that was out-dated by the 70s

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2022

Neeson once pledged to put down his gun, and four movies after that declaration, he still hasn't. It's time.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 31, 2022

Neesons late-career action shift sometimes pays dividends, but this time, the principal is genuinely idiotic.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2022

Just a ridiculous movie.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Mar 13, 2022

...a persistently middle-of-the-road thriller...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 4, 2022

Another disposable piece of geriaction that will keep Liam Neeson in Earl Grey and blazers for a few more months.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 2, 2022

Although interesting enough to keep audiences hooked with its tense car chases and shootouts, Blacklight sets no new thrills for hardcore action fans.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 1, 2022

It's very by-the-numbers. Neeson does this without even breaking a sweat, really.

Full Review | Feb 24, 2022

Typical Liam Neeson movie - one man against a ton of bad guys. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. This one is mildly entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 23, 2022

The usual conventional Liam Neeson action pic.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 22, 2022

‘Blacklight’ Review: Liam Neeson Does His Weary-Warrior Thing in Another Run-and-Gun Thriller

Writer-director Mark Williams provides a few echoes of ’70s paranoid melodramas to enliven very familiar material.

By Joe Leydon

Film Critic

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If “ Blacklight ” were any more generic, it would have a barcode instead of opening credits, and jettison its title in favor of a stenciled label: LIAM NEESON THRILLER. But if you approach it with sufficiently lowered expectations, and have fond memories of the ’70s paranoid dramas that obviously inspired director and co-writer Mark Williams, this might be your house-brand jam. T hat might not be enough for you to rush inside a multiplex to catch this time-killer during what likely will be a fleeting “Only In Theaters” run. “Blacklight” probably will play best when it reaches its natural habitat on streaming platform menus.

Continuing his seemingly endless run as the action-hero equivalent of Dad Jeans, Neeson brings his reliably effective world-weary gravitas to the role of Travis Block, a free-lance “fixer” for FBI director and long-time buddy Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn). Block is frequently tasked with extracting deep-cover agents when their cover is blown — or, perhaps more important, when they’ve spent too much time in the darkness to know their way out. An early scene illustrates Block’s efficiency as he saves an operative from a gun-wielding mob of what appear to be Jan. 6 cosplayers before they can do her grievous bodily harm in a trailer park. (Great solution: Distract the thugs by blowing up some of their trailers). But he’s more seriously challenged when it comes to retrieving Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), an agent who’s taken to self-medication with pills and booze in a vain attempt to salve his guilty conscience about misdeeds in the line of duty.

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Not that Crane wants to be extracted. During the movie’s opening minutes, we see him smiling approvingly while attending a campaign rally for a Congressional candidate who seems to take political inspiration (and fashion tips) from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When said candidate meets an untimely end after misplacing her trust in a ride-share driver, Crane is devastated, because while he was on an undercover mission to keep tabs on her, he — get ready for it! — fell in love with her. So he reaches out to Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman of “The Umbrella Academy”), reporter for a Washington, D.C.-based news website, to spill the beans about a dark conspiracy identified as “Operation Unity.” Not surprisingly, the FBI chief wants those beans to remain unspilled.

Popular on Variety

Meanwhile, Block is seriously considering getting out of the extraction business, if only to spend more quality time with Amanda (Claire Van Der Boom), his divorced daughter, and Natalie (Gabriella Sengos), his precocious granddaughter. Trouble is, Amanda is frankly concerned that her father’s paranoia might be contagious — she still recalls the days when he would run background checks on her friends’ parents — thereby making him a bad influence on her daughter. Block, of course, disagrees: “A little paranoia is healthy.” And besides, he’s already taught Natalie a lot about checking perimeters and looking out for strangers.

Family concerns must take a backseat to professional chores — for a while, at least — when Robinson ignores Block’s request for retirement and sends his fixer after Crane. One thing leads to another — at a satisfyingly brisk pace, it should be noted — and Block eventually unearths, with a little help from Jones, the dark truth about Operation Unity. But wait, there’s more: He does this without suffering the same fate that often befell inquisitive protagonists in the aforementioned ’70s dramas. This is a LIAM NEESON THRILLER, remember?

Working from a script he co-wrote with Nick May, Williams adds a few idiosyncratic elements to this warmed-over stew of high-speed car chases and high-casualty gunfights. Block isn’t merely paranoid, he’s also obsessive-compulsive, a fact sometimes played for laughs — such as when he meticulously sorts his shoes in his closet and orderly arranges beer cans in his refrigerator — and other times not. (His condition evidently has enhanced his ability to even the odds when outgunned.) Jones is aggressively dedicated to truth, justice and the American Way, but she’s not blind to the career-enhancement possibilities of writing “click bait.”

And you have to give Williams and Neeson this much: Even they recognize that the actor may be approaching the end of his shelf life as an action hero. Crane actually runs out of breath during extended foot chases. And when he isn’t quite able to best Crane in a fistfight, the younger man mocks him: “You’re slipping. You’re losing your grip.” Not yet. But soon?

Reviewed online, Feb. 8, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: A Briarcliff Entertainment release and presentation of a Footloose production, in association with Zero Gravity Management, The Solution Entertainment Group, Sina Studios, Fourstar Films, Elevate Production Finance. Producers: Mark Williams, Paul Currie, Myles Nestel, Aleve Loh, Coco Xiaolu Ma. Executive producers: Zhe Chen, Lisa Wilson, Craig Chapman, Domenic Benvenuto, Craig McMahon, Tom Ortenberg, James Michael Cummings, Paul Saleba.
• Crew: Director: Mark Williams. Screenplay: Nick May, Mark Williams; story: Nick May, Brandon Reavis. Camera: Shelly Johnson. Editor: Michael P. Shawyer. Music: Mark Isham.
• With: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor Johnson Smith, Yael Stone, Claire Van Der Boom, Gabriella Sengos

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Common Sense Media Review

Violent Neeson action movie squanders early promise.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Blacklight is an action thriller about an FBI operative (Liam Neeson) who finds out about a secret, deadly operation within the bureau and tries to expose it. It starts promisingly but quickly gets tired and generic. Violence is strong but largely bloodless, with guns and shooting,…

Why Age 14+?

Deaths. Lots of guns and shooting (and missing). Gun held to head. Grenade launc

Uses of "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "ass," "damn," "hell," "crap." "

Several bottles of Bud Light seen in refrigerator. Prominently displayed Starbuc

Character pops pills and drinks from a flask. Characters sip whiskey in a bar an

Any Positive Content?

Lead character Travis Block is a White man. Supporting character Mira Jones, a j

Travis Block always tries to do the right thing, even though he sometimes doesn'

Makes political commentary about people in power who use their power only to sta

Violence & Scariness

Deaths. Lots of guns and shooting (and missing). Gun held to head. Grenade launcher used. Angry, threatening mob with guns. Person hit and killed by car. Bloody wounds. People are electrocuted. Neck-snapping sound. Fighting, punching, kicking, choking. Car chases, crashes. Explosions. Fall from high place. Knife-wielding. Dialogue about a woman being beaten up and potentially raped.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Uses of "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "ass," "damn," "hell," "crap." "Jesus" as an exclamation. Someone says "effing."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Several bottles of Bud Light seen in refrigerator. Prominently displayed Starbucks bag. Twitter mentioned.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Character pops pills and drinks from a flask. Characters sip whiskey in a bar and in the FBI director's office. Main character drinks a beer at home. Glass of wine at home. Mention of cocaine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

Lead character Travis Block is a White man. Supporting character Mira Jones, a journalist, is a strong, independent woman of color who's devoted to trying to make the world a better place. Other women appear in positions of power, including a Latino politician (who is, unfortunately, killed early on). Main character sometimes demonstrates OCD-like symptoms. Some body-type diversity.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Role Models

Travis Block always tries to do the right thing, even though he sometimes doesn't succeed. He's led a violent life and has run away from mistakes. But he still tries. Mira Jones is a reporter who's determined to get to the truth and help people, but her journalism skills are a little lacking (she doesn't seem to care about facts or sources).

Positive Messages

Makes political commentary about people in power who use their power only to stay in power vs. other figures who believe in helping others. Draws a fairly clear line between the two, but then violence and sensationalism are used to get to the "truth."

Parents need to know that Blacklight is an action thriller about an FBI operative ( Liam Neeson ) who finds out about a secret, deadly operation within the bureau and tries to expose it. It starts promisingly but quickly gets tired and generic. Violence is strong but largely bloodless, with guns and shooting, deaths, explosions, car chases and crashes, minor bloody wounds, fighting, punching, kicking, and choking, villains being electrocuted, a neck-snapping sound, and some dialogue about violence toward women. Language includes a few uses of "s--t," plus "bitch," "a--hole," etc. Characters casually drink beer, wine, and whiskey either at home or with others. A character pops some pills and drinks from a flask. Sex isn't an issue. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (4)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In BLACKLIGHT, Travis Block ( Liam Neeson ) is a special behind-the-scenes operative for the FBI whose job is to protect undercover agents. He works directly for the bureau director, Gabriel Robinson ( Aidan Quinn ). After the mysterious death of a rising young progressive politician, Agent Dusty Crane ( Taylor John Smith ) tries to go to the press to tell the real story behind Robinson's activities, and, because it's his job, Travis tries to stop him. Dusty manages to speak briefly with reporter Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman) before he's mercilessly gunned down right in front of Travis' eyes. Travis starts to realize that something's wrong, and when his daughter and granddaughter suddenly disappear, he teams up with Mira to find the truth.

Is It Any Good?

There are hints that an earlier draft of the screenplay might once have had some cutting political commentary, but this action movie has been smoothed out so much that it's shopworn and generic. Directed by Mark Williams, who also made the more fleet-footed Honest Thief with Neeson, Blacklight begins with two promising sequences. In one, Travis must rescue an agent who's been stuck undercover in a community of racists; she has been found out, and an angry, gun-toting mob tries to storm her trailer. She tearfully tells Travis that the pressure just got to her, and she slipped up. It would have been interesting to learn more about this story, but we never hear from her again. Then we're treated to a speech by progressive politician Sofia Flores (Mel Jarnson) shaming the wealthy for hoarding and urging health care for all.

It's easy to guess that Flores is modeled after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and that she's considered a threat to the establishment. Unfortunately, she also disappears from the story quickly, and when she does, Blacklight simply becomes a series of tense dialogue exchanges (much of it expositional), shoot-outs, and chases, none of which feel very inspired or exciting. Mira is a reporter who doesn't seem interested in investigating or checking facts; she only wants to write her big story because "it's obvious." Even poor Neeson seems out of gas in this one. When he warns the villain, "you're gonna need more men," it doesn't pack half the punch of his best action-hero line deliveries. At the end, Travis is left to babysit his granddaughter -- which, frankly, might have made a more interesting movie than this one.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Blacklight 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How is drinking portrayed? Is it glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

Do you consider Mira Jones a role model ? Why, or why not?

Do the events of the movie parallel things that happened in real life? How?

What's the appeal of Liam Neeson as an action hero? How is he different from other movie action heroes?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 11, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : May 3, 2022
• Cast : Liam Neeson , Emmy Raver-Lampman , Aidan Quinn
• Director : Mark Williams
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studios : Open Road Films , Briarcliff Entertainment
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 108 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : strong violence, action and language
• Last updated : July 15, 2023

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The Liam Neeson Action Genre Deserves Better Than Blacklight

Oddly enough, it might count as something of a triumph that the new Liam Neeson dadsploitation flick Blacklight feels like such a letdown. Partly because Neeson’s most recent run of roles, while not exactly distinguished, has been at times interesting and moving enough that we’ve come to expect more from these pictures. Films like Cold Pursuit , The Marksman , and The Ice Road may be of varying quality, but they still offer intriguing variations on the Neeson persona. The actor, as we already know, likes to play sensitive tough guys looking to protect/preserve/save their loved ones , but he often does so with an unusual degree of commitment and psychological authenticity than most other actors who tackle such parts. Blacklight certainly has some of that, but it settles for such generic action, character, and story beats that it makes one long for the glory days of Honest Thief.

That’s not a specious comparison, by the way. Honest Thief (2020) and Blacklight were both directed by Ozark co-creator Mark Williams, and he invested that earlier title with a streamlined melancholy that served both his star’s plainspoken sincerity and the story’s general mood of simmering dread. Blacklight has a similar stripped-down quality, but here it feels less like an aesthetic choice and more like a lack of effort. No element of the narrative is presented with the modicum of detail required to make us care about what’s happening and to whom — which is a shame, because if you squint really hard you could see the beginnings of an intriguing political thriller in there somewhere.

As Travis Block, an FBI veteran who specializes in extracting agitated undercover agents from dangerous situations, Neeson doesn’t have to do much ass kicking this time around; he mostly drives and talks. Most of the physical stuff in the film comes courtesy of Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), an undercover agent in the midst of an identity crisis over the mysterious death of a young, inspiring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez–style politician (Mel Jarnson). When Dusty tries to approach a Washington, D.C., reporter, Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), with what he knows, Travis springs into action to try and stop him. Of course, Travis himself has no idea about what Dusty has done or what the troubled agent actually knows; our hero merely does the bidding of FBI head Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), an old Vietnam War buddy who has ruled Travis’s entire world and has spent decades using him in highly sensitive missions. And Gabriel, we can already tell, is up to no good. (That’s not a spoiler; the trailer gives all that away, and besides, why would you cast Quinn as the head of the FBI if he wasn’t going to get up to some stuff?)

There are all sorts of promising ideas here, not the least of which is the onscreen reunion of Neeson and Quinn, two veteran Irish actors who have worked together several times over the course of their respective careers. (They first teamed up in 1986’s The Mission , though their most notable collaboration was probably playing revolutionary partners and romantic rivals in Neil Jordan’s epic 1996 biopic Michael Collins . Also, in the 2011 amnesiac thriller Unknown , Quinn’s character mysteriously replaced Neeson’s.) Here they have a kind of Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster vibe: Travis is the trusting muscle that the ambitious and ruthless Gabriel has manipulated for his whole career. It’s fun to watch these two actors, who are good friends in real life, facing off; you can sense the currents of familiarity running between them. If only the script gave them something more beyond the most generic exchanges. Even so, Quinn knows to deliver an uninspired line such as “We are in this to the end” with a knowing gleam in his eye.

The film does offer one intriguing fold in Neeson’s characterization. Travis is obsessive-compulsive, which probably comes in handy when you’re a guy who always has to make sure he knows how many exits there are in a room. But even this element feels haphazard and half-hearted, more like window dressing than anything anyone has put any thought into. We do get some shots of Travis repeating certain actions and rearranging objects on tables and in closets, but this trait never comes into play in any consequential way. When Travis’s daughter, Amanda (Claire van der Boom), complains that she never had a proper childhood and is afraid that her own daughter won’t get to have one either, that clearly relates more to our tough-guy hero’s paranoia than his compulsive behavior; this is not a new complaint in Neeson-land.

These missed opportunities might have been forgivable had the film’s genre elements not felt so impoverished. Surely, a movie about the FBI killing people in broad daylight on the streets of Washington, D.C., could have done with some atmosphere, some detail, to try and sell us on this intriguing (though not exactly original) idea. Alas, it’s all basically reduced to a couple of nondescript agents lifelessly trying to kill our heroes in curiously empty and nondescript environments — serviceable but also forgettable. (It’s no surprise to discover that Blacklight was shot in Melbourne, Australia.) Meanwhile, scenes of Mira at work as a reporter suggest that neither director Williams nor writer Nick May has been within a mile of any actual newsroom. Part of the fun of movies like this is the opportunity for the audience to immerse themselves in the procedural minutiae of these worlds, but there’s precious little of that here. Everything is so empty, so incomplete. Blacklight feels like a synopsis waiting for a story.

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‘Blacklight’: Liam Neeson’s a tough guy again, this time with a Dodge Charger and OCD

He’s slugging and sulking again as a hardbitten freelance “dark ops” agent secretly doing the bidding of fbi director aidan quinn..

“Dark ops” freelancer Travis Block (Liam Neeson, left) makes a connection with an undercover FBI agent (Taylor John Smith) in “Blacklight.”

Briarcliff Entertainment

“I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s time I hang it up.” — Liam Neeson’s veteran, off-the-books, particular-set-of-skills operative in “Blacklight.” Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t hang it up.

When those goofy Razzie Awards nominations were announced earlier this week, history was made as Bruce Willis was given his own Worst Performance category for his work in the following films:

“American Siege”

“Midnight in the Switchgrass”

“Cosmic Sin”

“Out of Death”

“Survive the Game”

You know what’s most remarkable about that list? Even with Willis gobbling up action roles in recent years like they were M&Ms, there still are plenty of drive-in level screenplays out there giving Liam Neeson the chance to play yet another hard-bitten anti-hero with a shady background and a muscle car who gets dragged into a byzantine and violent adventure. The last few years alone have seen the now 69-year-old Neeson punching and slugging and shooting and chasing and brooding and sulking and sleuthing his way through “The Commuter” and “Cold Pursuit” and “Honest Thief” and “The Marksman” and “The Ice Road” and now “Blacklight,” which is based on the true story of one Dr. William H. Byler, who is widely (and somewhat controversially) credited with inventing the iconic ultraviolet lamp in 1935 …

I’m KIDDING. If they were going to make a movie about Dr. William H. Byler, the perhaps-inventor of the blacklight, they would have cast Benedict Cumberbatch. This particular “Blacklight” is pure, overblown, cliché-riddled fiction.

“Blacklight” opens with the hit-and-run death of one Sofia Flores (Mel Jarnson), who is clearly modeled after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as evidenced by the Big Liberal Speech she delivers just before the suspicious accident. You’d think a story like this would be big news, but the media doesn’t seem that interested until Sofia’s boyfriend, Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), reveals himself to be an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated Sofia’s life under false pretenses but then really fell in love with her and now Dusty wants to tell his story and that’s gonna blow the lid off a whole pot of corruption, people!

Enter Neeson’s Travis Block, and you gotta love it when we get character names like Travis Block and Dusty Crane, right? We first see Travis in action as he rescues an undercover FBI agent from a mob of violent white supremacists who have figured out she’s not one of them. A little ingenuity, some pyrotechnics and just like that, Travis is roaring away in his Dodge Charger. He’s still got it, man.

Turns out Travis is a freelancer who does “dark ops” work for his longtime friend and former Vietnam buddy, the FBI Director Gabriel Robinson, who is played by the great Aidan Quinn, making the most of a role that has him wearing tuxes just before some big event and handing his old pal Travis a tumbler of whiskey as the two old lions parry about the work they do and the price that must be paid for freedom and all that jazz. When things get contentious, Gabriel reminds Travis, “You work for me, you are my weapon,” to which Travis replies, “After all these years, that’s all I am to you?”

(Travis also has OCD, as evidenced by him locking and unlocking his apartment door multiple times and arranging everything from his shoes to the bottles of beer in his fridge in precise order. This is the third movie this week to feature a lead who is on the spectrum, following Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot in “Death on the Nile” and Zoe Kravitz’ Angela in “Kimi.” In the former two films, these conditions were an integral part of the character; here, it feels like something that was tacked on and isn’t a consistent theme in the story.)

With the requisite techno score setting the tone for maximum intensity and the occasional competently filmed chase or shootout sequence dropped in here and there, “Blacklight” indulges in a number of action-movie clichés, including the struggling but hardworking reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) who can’t get her editor to see there’s a huge story developing right in front of them, and the obtuse editor who says things like, “News stories are based on facts. Find them first, [then] write your story!” Then there’s the plot thread involving Travis and his grown daughter Amanda (Claire van der Boom) and granddaughter Natalie (Gabriella Sengos). Travis wasn’t around much when Amanda was growing up, but by golly, he’s going to be there for Natalie! Even if he did just miss…yep…you guessed it … Natalie’s SCHOOL PLAY.

Of course, we know there’s a strong chance the lives of Amanda and Natalie will be in jeopardy at one point, because that’s what evil does in movies like this: It goes after the ones you care about the most. It’s too bad nobody in this story is familiar with the “Taken” franchise. They should know the one thing you really don’t want to do is mess with Liam Neeson’s family, because the man has a very particular —

Taste in screenplays.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure

Content Caution

In Theaters

• February 11, 2022
• Liam Neeson as Travis Block; Aidan Quinn as Gabriel Robinson; Emmy Raver-Lampman as Mira Jones; Claire van der Boom as Amanda Block; Gabriella Sengos as Natalie Block; Taylor John Smith as Dusty Crane; Tim Draxl as Drew Hawthorne

Home Release Date

• May 3, 2022
• Mark Williams

Distributor

• Open Road Films

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Travis Brock sure won’t be mistaken for a youngster, but he still makes seemingly less-than-wise choices like a teen who isn’t old enough to know better. When he’s casually driving his Dodge Charger at 95 m.p.h., or turning propane tanks into homemade bombs, you wouldn’t think he was a retirement-age grandad who just wants to spend a little more time with his sweet granddaughter.

But that’s the paradox of Travis’ world: A little grandpa playtime mixed with a lot of breaking-and-entering, extortion and physical coercion. You see, he’s been an off-the-book fixer for the FBI for most of his life. A man who lives, and who works his “magic,” in the shadows.

Part of Travis’ job is also covering up for special agents who have blown their cover and find themselves in difficult situations. And during one such task, the weathered fixer discovers a secret FBI program he never knew existed.

In fact, this shadowy operation is something he’s not supposed to know exits. Operation Unity is killing private citizens and being run by FBI chief Gabriel Robinson, the one man Travis thought he could trust unwaveringly.

Refusing to murder for the government is one of those lines that Travis Block has long refused to cross. Other people, apparently, aren’t so hesitant. And now that he’s asking questions and picking at the truth, those other folks have got an eye on him—and on his daughter and granddaughter. It may all be bluff to force Travis to keep his mouth shut. But that doesn’t sit well with this particular old guy.

He may be a bit long in the tooth, but Travis knows his stuff. And if there’s one thing that can push him across that killing line, it’s anything that puts the people he loves in danger.

Positive Elements

Travis really does want to slow down and spend more time with his granddaughter, Natalie. Ever since the girl’s deadbeat dad jumped ship, Travis has felt compelled to be a solid male figure in the little girl’s life—something he wasn’t always very good at with daughter Amanda (Natalie’s mom).

Amanda, however, is very protective of Natalie. Travis struggles with OCD, something he’s actually put to surprisingly productive use in his profession. But Amanda is afraid it’s wearing off in bad ways on the little girl—who regularly makes rounds at home to make sure all the doors are locked. “You might be the one turning her into a crazy person,” Amanda cries. Natalie, on the other hand, loves both her mom and grandfather unconditionally. And Travis and Amanda work at being a closer, loving family who work together and focus on Natalie’s needs.

Travis also crosses paths with an earnest young reporter named Mira. She wants to advance her career as a journalist. But she risks her life to publicize the truth about Operation Unity once she realizes how terrible it is. And Travis puts his life on the line to help her and protect her—along with every other innocent in the line of fire.

Spiritual Elements

Sexual & romantic content, violent content.

There are a lot of thumping fist fights and car chases in the mix here. Travis is older but still trades blows with a number of younger men, giving him bloody gashes on his face and bullet in his leg. The chases—involving a variety of cars, SUVs and a large trash truck—end up smashing vehicles in the street, flipping them and setting them on fire. Speeding vehicles also careen pell-mell through pedestrian areas, causing innocents to leap and tumble for their lives. Elsewhere, police and armed opponents stand off against each other with guns drawn.

There are also some much more deadly and bloody battles between men with high-caliber weapons. Men are electrocuted, riddled with bullets, and slashed with knives. The deadliness is bloody without being gory. A woman gets mowed down by a large SUV. (We see her crumpled and bloody in the street.) A guy crashes his car and then has his neck snapped by a killer. A large truck flips in the middle of a city street. A vehicle is blown up by a grenade launcher.

Crude or Profane Language

There are a dozen exclamations of the s-word and one use of “eff-ing.” Those are joined by one or two uses each of the words “h—,” “b–tard,” “b–ch” “d–n,” and “a–hole.” Jesus’ name is misused once.

Drug & Alcohol Content

A worried agent sits in his car drinking booze and washing down prescription drugs. Travis pulls a beer out of his fridge—which features rows of well-organized beer bottles.

Other Noteworthy Elements

The FBI director, Gabriel, proclaims that fear is what gets politicians elected. And fear is what will keep the masses in line and give the government the power they need. He notes that “history tells us that spilling a little blood is absolutely necessary to maintain law and order.” Gabriel also lies repeatedly to his supposed friend Travis in an effort to get him back in line.

Let’s face it, Liam Neeson action films have almost become a genre unto themselves. (Or perhaps a parody unto themselves would be a more accurate description.) This time Neeson is a grandfather/FBI fixer with a certain set of skills that, well, you wouldn’t want him using around the kids.

Blacklight, however, is a particularly ham-fisted entry in this popular Irish actor’s filmography. The script is overwrought and illogical, the plot points are as predictable as a train schedule, and the acting is pedestrian.

It’s not the foulest, most bloody nor most violent pic around, but it definitely has a messy side. And you won’t need an ultraviolet light to pick up on it. That’s if your eyes can stop rolling long enough to pick up on much of anything.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Review: Liam Neeson and his skills hit copy-paste in formulaic ‘Blacklight’

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Liam Neeson came late to action star status because guys get to do that, and the imposing Irish hunk brought his own mix of sensitivity and ruthlessness — I was not going to write “particular set of skills,” I promise — to an avenger genre waiting for revival. But the going-on-70 actor has hinted at winding down that lucrative part of his career, and there’s no better example that the time should be soon than “Blacklight,” the kind of low-wattage, paint-by-numbers thriller that usually signifies a perilous turn toward the action purgatory that is cheap, direct-to-nowhere fare. (See Bruce Willis.)

Neeson’s role here, perhaps not ironically, is someone whose specialty is getting people out of jams, and he soon finds that his line of work is worth bailing from. Travis Block is an extraction expert, first introduced speeding in his sleek Dodge muscle car to a powder keg situation at a white supremacist trailer park hideout where an exposed undercover FBI agent is hiding, mid-breakdown. Block does his thing with some well-placed gas explosions but clearly isn’t in the mood to hear about the mental stress of long-term play-acting with racist wackjobs.

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Block works off the books for FBI Director Gabe Robinson — played by a bored Aidan Quinn — who keeps a picture of J. Edgar Hoover on his desk so we know on what side of the law enforcement ethics line he falls. But Robinson also tells us what he thinks — as the screenplay (credited to Nick May and director Mark Williams) will have its characters do, often, artlessly, repeatedly, as if we’re children. Double agents and their problems are nuisances! DC is run by politically correct cowards! There are “creative ways” of keeping the peace! Fear is a tool!

But working for a casually unrepentant fascist isn’t why Block wants to retire, initially — the good soldier wants to spend more time with his grown daughter Amanda (Claire Van der Boom) and only granddaughter. Before he can do that, he’s tasked with stopping another sweaty, nervy, loose cannon FBI operative named Dusty (Taylor John Smith) who wants to spill the beans to a muckraking reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) about nefarious operations undermining democracy. Soon, Block is the one learning things.

Baby’s First Conspiracy Thriller is inept about everything, from how journalism works — why is this so difficult for movies to get right? — to assassin logic to the inconsistencies in its lead character. Block, who has obsessive-compulsive disorder, is supposedly paranoid about his family’s safety, to the extent that his overprotectiveness is a sore spot with Amanda; it’s an early laugh line that he counts the exits at the granddaughter’s birthday party. So it makes no sense that he sets up a security camera outside the daughter’s home only after events get out of control, plus, it’s ridiculously visible and Amanda catches him installing it.

“Blacklight” is initially a theater-only release, but is its true destiny — to borrow a time-killing moniker from the world of multi-task TV watching — as a laundry folder? Williams’ directbot style is painless to absorb, the slick urban blandness not unlike a big city screensaver, while the personality-free, this-is-what-I’m-thinking dialogue certainly doesn’t require anyone to concentrate on what an actor is doing onscreen for extra shading.

There are a couple of serviceable car chases, but they do nothing for the story’s sense of danger, which is nonexistent because of how ridiculously formulaic the whole thing is, like a pamphlet for a thriller. And Neeson mostly looks stymied repeating the same beats as one more pushed-to-the-limits hard case. Elsewhere, he just looks tired. Maybe he was thinking about his post-retirement private beach, those iconic lines from “Taken” taking new form: “I will look for you, I will find you, and I will relax.”

'Blacklight'

Rated: PG-13 for strong violence, action and language Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 11 in limited release

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Blacklight (China/Australia/USA, 2022)

It’s February. That means it’s time for cold weather and snow, groundhogs having their day, and Liam Neeson coming out with yet another kick-ass action/thriller. (Do not confuse the term “kick-ass” with “good” or even “watchable.”) Back in 2008, Neeson, then primarily known as a “serious” actor who occasionally made forays into popcorn territory ( The Phantom Menace , Batman Begins ), decided to broaden his repertoire by playing the hero in Luc Besson and Pierre Morel’s Taken . 14 years later, Neeson has opened no fewer than a dozen of these movies (in which he typically plays carbon copies of the same character with different names) – all but a few in the January/February time period. It has gotten to the point where February seems incomplete with one of these Neeson paydays. But, my God, have they started to stink.

To start things off by damning with faint praise, Blacklight is better than Neeson’s last effort, The Ice Road (which had at one point been intended for a February 2021 release until it went the streaming route and was pushed into June). And it’s certainly no worse than either The Marksman or Honest Thief . (Sad to say, those are the last four movies for which Neeson’s name has topped the marquee. He must be concerned about fattening up his bank account.) This subgenre, which offered a few guilty pleasures in the beginning, has degenerated beyond the point of reclamation. And Neeson has given up the pretense of acting. His performance in Blacklight (no idea why it’s called that) is on par with that of Steven Seagal in his prime. Come to think of it, they’re playing pretty much the same characters.

Every time Neeson makes one of these worse-than-generic thrillers, publicists roll out the Taken comparisons. It’s not that Taken was a great film but it was popular and is generally fondly remembered. But these movies have become so stale and tasteless that with each new one, Taken starts to look better and better. In terms of storytelling, excitement, and overall entertainment value, Blacklight is a black hole.

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• Die Hard (1969)
• Baby Driver (2017)
• Speed (1994)
• Revolver (2007)
• Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
• Ice Road, The (2021)
• Schindler's List (1993)
• Rob Roy (1995)
• Star Wars (Episode 1): The Phantom Menace (1999)
• Haunting, The (1999)
• Legends of the Fall (1995)
• Michael Collins (1996)
• Flipped (2010)
• Nine Lives (2005)
• Jonah Hex (2010)
• Unknown (2011)
• Outpost, The (2020)
• Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
• (There are no more better movies of Taylor John Smith)
• (There are no more worst movies of Taylor John Smith)

Movie review: 'Blacklight' stretches Liam Neeson formula, still entertains

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- Blacklight, in theaters Friday, is a perfectly entertaining Liam Neeson action movie. It gets a little carried away with its generic plot, but the action comes frequently, so it's a good time at the movies.

Travis Block (Neeson) works for the FBI, helping extract undercover agents who may have gone too deep. His pursuit of potential whistleblower Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith ) leads Block to reporter Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who makes him really question who he works for. Advertisement

This is a fairly standard character for Neeson. Block obviously has a very particular set of skills he can pull out whenever the situation calls for it. His pursuit of Crane escalates very quickly, too.

Crane puts up a fight against arresting police, and escapes from Block's custody. Block gives chase, and there's some exciting action just about every 10 minutes. Advertisement

Director Mark Williams staged real car chases with some inventive uses of a garbage truck. The cuts are a tad quicker than the eye might prefer, but you still can tell those are real cars and trucks performing the stunts.

Block discovers the actual conspiracy a lot later than the trailers make it appear. For much of the movie, it's just Block chasing his fugitive, but it's still a solid straight-ahead pursuit movie.

Alas, it appears Block's boss, Gabe Robinson (Aidan Quinn) is using FBI resources for nefarious purposes, and those resources include Block.

That's all fine. Corrupt government agents are perfectly valid villains for the likes of Neeson or Steven Seagal . Blacklight seems to mistake that thin action movie motivation for a real exposure.

Robinson monolog about the merits of his covert program to his henchmen. Why? Who is he convincing here? The audience already gets that he's gone too far.

Perhaps Jones' editor needs more convincing, though. When Jones tells her editor the extent of the FBI's misdeeds, the biggest reaction she can muster up is, "Yeah, that is messed up."

Such a lackluster response is probably telling that this is still a generic, made-up conspiracy. It's not a real exposure. Advertisement

Even if there are shady government programs, Blacklight isn't the call to action. The conspiracy is just the instigation for the action hero to get the bad guys. Indiana Jones used Nazis as the bad guys, but those movies didn't delve into their politics.

Dialogue about Block's family is on the nose about how the job made Block unavailable. His daughter, Amanda (Claire van der Bloom), reminds him why her mom --, his wife -- left. Block wants to be in his granddaughter's life, but he may be a bad influence with all his paranoia.

Don't worry about delusions of grandeur threatening a good time. These histrionics are interrupted frequently enough by thrilling scenes that they don't weigh it down.

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‘Blacklight’ Film Review: Liam Neeson Does That Liam Neeson Thing Again, To Diminishing Returns

The Irish actor isn’t necessarily phoning in yet another man-with-a-set-of-skills action saga, but this dopey thriller is all disbelief and no suspense

Since “Taken” in 2008, Liam Neeson has starred in so many movies where he plays a character who protects, rescues, mourns, or avenges his family that it seems somewhat pointless to invest deeply enough in the latest to care whether it’s better than its predecessors, much less if it’s individually good or bad.

Directed, produced, and cowritten by Mark Williams (Neeson’s 2020 film “Honest Thief”), “Blacklight” is an unsurprisingly tepid action thriller which extends this odd phase of Neeson’s career, but the best thing that can probably be said about it is that it’s not materially worse than most of the others.

Williams coaches Neeson through another of the actor’s increasingly familiar gruff-but-sensitive performances while telling the story of the kind of black-bag man whose simultaneous political obsolescence and extrajudicial necessity movies like this too frequently want to explore without possessing the narrative or intellectual sophistication to do so with any real nuance or complexity.

Neeson plays Travis Block, a MacGyver-like enforcer and fixer working at the behest of FBI director Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn) to solve problems that ordinary law enforcement (much less proper legal channels) cannot. When a protégé of his named Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith, “Hunter Killer”) gets picked up by the police for sitting in front the workplace of journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman, “The Umbrella Academy”) with a bottle of pills and a handgun in his passenger seat, Block intervenes on his behalf and promises to get him some help. Before he can do so, however, the inconsolable young man escapes Block’s custody and tries to give Jones information about what he claims is a secret FBI program that involves the murder of innocent citizens.

Block, who is eyeing his departure from the agency in order to repair his relationship with his daughter Amanda (Claire van der Boom, “Hawaii Five-0”) and granddaughter Natalie (Gabriella Sengos), is doubtful of Dusty’s claims, as much as anything out of obligation to Robinson for protecting him in the past for an accidental murder he committed during his youth. But when he witnesses firsthand the pair of assassins that Dusty claimed were after him, Block decides to look a little closer into his boss and former comrade’s off-the-books activities.

After Robinson tries to scare him off of asking too many questions, Block realizes that he cannot stop pursuing Dusty’s claims until he discovers the truth, even if it means that Robinson tries to use Block’s family against him. In the meantime, he connects with Mira Jones himself as she searches for her own answers, leading the two of them to decide if it’s worth their lives to expose what appears to be a government conspiracy.

Looking at the introduction of Travis Block, you get the sense that the filmmakers have agreed that Neeson’s presence alone is sufficient, and so they won’t make him do too much work; the sequence is meant to depict a tense standoff between two deputies and a mob of white supremacists over an undercover agent who infiltrated the supremacists’ riverside community, but while everyone else argues in front of the camper where the agent is hiding, Neeson walks to the back, engages in a protracted conversation with the agent and sets up an explosive distraction before driving away in a roaring, polished Mustang.

Giving credit where it’s due, as a longtime Neeson fan, the actor hasn’t followed in Bruce Willis’ footsteps and fully given up on acting for anything other than his paycheck, but it would be tough to argue successfully that he’s working very hard in a role like this, though he goes through the motions with almost enough conviction for you to believe he thinks audiences care about anything in this context other than the violence and mayhem he creates.

As Dusty, Taylor John Smith feels like a dime-store Dan Stevens, hunky and more than a little bit haunted, but the way that his action scenes are staged suggest that his character — who wrestles with his complicity in the FBI’s secret program — wants to inflict maximum pain upon anyone in his way, even the minimum-wage security guards at an automotive museum where he meets with Mira Jones. More strange is the eventual discovery that the program in question is not some sort of “Manchurian Candidate” situation where agents are trained to dispense of their humanity, just a secret operation where undercover agents keep tabs on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez–like populist rabble-rousers and, when necessary, eliminate them.

Similarly, while the writing for Jones thankfully avoids the broader and more insidious movie clichés about reporters, her scruffy determination to expose the truth settles into a less irritating but no less familiar character type, even as her two editors seem less interested in investigative journalism than anyone I’ve ever met in a newsroom, at one point telling her, “playing detective is not going to solve anything.” At the same time, her more or less instant belief and trust of Neeson’s Block offers a poor juxtaposition to the skepticism that causes her to fixate on breaking Dusty’s story.

Then again, the movie also can’t decide whether a person like Block with a “certain set of skills” and the will to use them is a poisonous representation of government secrecy and overreach, or an essential counterbalance to the bureaucratic villainy that Quinn’s Robinson embodies.

Outside of Block’s journey to discover “if he’s doing bad things no one knows about, then probably his boss is getting other people to do worse things,” Williams’ staging of the man-to-man action as well as a couple of car-chase scenes has a perfunctory technical prowess that highlights the availability of enough resources to get public spaces like parks and freeways closed for shooting but nothing left over (monetarily or creatively) to fill in the backgrounds with other cars or passersby.

As a result, a movie like “Blacklight” feels like a vivid reminder that actors really are just playing around and shouting “pew-pew” at each other; truly gifted performers and filmmakers can convince us that what they are doing and what they are examining is worth caring about, but when even they don’t seem especially invested in creating a believable reality, then the end result becomes all disbelief and no suspense.

“Blacklight” opens in US theaters Feb. 11.

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“Blacklight”: Solid action, shaky story

February 11, 2022 By Louis Howley Leave a Comment

“Blacklight” is suspenseful political thriller that is marred by a weak script. The uniformly excellent acting and intense car chases are counterbalanced by the often-times implausible plot. The net result is an average film.

The beginning of the movie has two set pieces. In the first, activist Sofia Flores (Mel Jarnson) is making an impassioned speech for her liberal agenda in front of supporters on the National Mall. Later, she is getting out of a rideshare when she is run over and killed by another vehicle. The rideshare driver clearly was part of this set-up.

In the other sequence, Travis Block (Liam Neeson) is driving along at 90-plus miles an hour. He arrives at a trailer park where a gang of armed citizens are confronting two sheriff’s deputies at one of the trailers. They want to do who-knows-what to a woman who has been outed as a government agent.

Travis is a “fixer” who reports directly to Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), the head of the FBI. He has come to rescue the wayward agent. He rigs up some MacGyver-style explosive distractions and rescues his charge from the threatening mob.

Travis and Gabriel were together in Vietnam in 1975. As the United States prepared to evacuate Saigon, the two men encounter a man assaulting a woman. When the man turns to them, Travis, seeing what he thinks is a gun, shoots and kills him. The “weapon” was a liquor bottle and the victim is their own commander. While Travis is freaked out, Gabriel tells him to forget it and this becomes a secret between them.

Travis led an aimless life for 15 years after returning to the States, until Gabriel recruited him for the FBI. Since Travis is not officially on the books, he gives the FBI director plausible deniability for anything he does. While Travis is a fixer, he has never murdered anyone, he later confides to a reporter.

A side story concerns his grown daughter and young granddaughter. When he is attending Natalie’s (Gabriella Sengos) birthday party, he counts all of the exits as part of his need to protect his family.

This over-attentiveness is partially due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He is very precise in organizing his living space. When he gets repetitive thoughts (shown by a shaking, blurry screen), he does something three times to snap out of it.

Amanda (Claire van der Boom), Travis’s daughter, is concerned because her daughter is imitating the paranoid security aspects of her grandfather. Travis wants to spend more time with Natalie. But his unreliability in showing up due to the unpredictability of when he will be needed for his job gives Amanda pause. She also thinks that her father’s mental state is precarious and advises him to seek help.

After Flores is murdered, we see Special Agent Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith) in plainclothes sitting in his car with medication, alcohol and a gun. When confronted by the police, he beats up a slew of them until one finally pulls a gun on him.

In the jail, where Travis has been dispatched to bail him out, Dusty intimates that all is not right at the FBI. He plans on meeting Mira (Emmy Raver-Lampman), a reporter for the News Cycle, and spill the beans. Complications ensue.

I often wonder if there is a cottage industry that writes action/thriller films for Liam Neeson. In this one, his character Travis Block has some of the tropes of his “Taken” persona, but also shows vulnerability.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the manifestation of his OCD, other than when the script required it. Amanda’s concern for his mental state makes it unclear if she believes that his untreated OCD is leading to his deterioration or if she thinks that something more is happening to cause his hyper-security nature.

There are many problems with the script that weaken the picture. In one scene, Travis, while driving the bailed-out Dusty to an FBI retreat of some kind, remembers that he needs to pick up Natalie. She is alone at her school when he arrives. In this day and age, I found this totally unbelievable.

The FBI director at one point states that he is the head of the most powerful organization in the world. I couldn’t tell if he was simply deluded or if the scriptwriter thought that this is the truth. I doubt that the FBI has the ranking Gabriel Robinson thinks that it does.

Travis seems like a smart man, but somehow does not fully understand the implications of being off-the-books for his employer. Why does he not realize that Gabriel would keep incriminating evidence against him should he go rogue or try to leave? Did he really think that he could just leave anytime he wanted?

When Travis finally has a falling-out with the FBI, there are several opportunities where he could have just been shot and the FBI’s problem with him solved. The ruthlessness of this agency in other scenes makes their coddling of Travis and the snoopy reporter seem unbelievable.

In one scene, Dusty fights off two cops only to have others arrive immediately as if they are just standing around. But when he wipes out city streets with his hijacked garbage truck, nary a police vehicle is to be seen.

There is an indication that Travis’s wife left because he was never around due to his job. How inept are FBI agents that Travis is constantly rescuing them?

The film does not provide enough backstory to the family situation of Travis. I found this subplot to actually be a distraction to the main storyline.

Since I cannot give out spoilers, let me just say that the ending of the movie seems very Pollyanna. I did not believe this outcome would result from what we had seen.

On the plus side, Canberra, Australia does a nice job subbing for Washington. The cinematography is a plus, especially in the car chases and firefight scenes. These sequences were well-staged. The MacGyver twists in these sequences should have indicated that more of this type of footage would be welcome.

So this picture is a mixed bag. I could not completely buy into it.

Two and a half out of five stars

Trust, identity, and the danger of unchecked power push a covert operative to the edge in director Mark Williams’ intense action thriller Blacklight. Travis Block (Neeson) lives and fights in the shadows. A freelance government “fixer,” Block is a dangerous man whose assignments have included extracting agents out of deep-cover situations. When Block discovers a shadowy program called Operation Unity is striking down ordinary citizens for reasons known only to Block’s boss, FBI chief Robinson (Quinn), he enlists the help of a journalist (Raver-Lampman), but his past and present collide when his daughter and granddaughter are threatened. Now Block needs to rescue the people he loves and expose the truth for a shot at redemption. Nothing and no one is safe when secrets are hidden in Blacklight.

Starring: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Emy Raver-Lapman Directed By: Mark Williams Written By: Nick May and Mark Williams

I often wonder if there is a cottage industry that writes action/thriller films for Liam Neeson. In this one, his character Travis Block has some of the tropes of his “Taken” persona, but also shows vulnerability. Since I cannot give out spoilers, let me just say that the ending of the movie seems very Pollyanna. I did not believe this outcome would result from what we had seen.

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About Louis Howley

Louis Howley is a long-time resident of Arizona. He is a retired public librarian who enjoys watching all types of feature films and documentaries. His favorite genre is horror. Among his favorite films are “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), “Psycho” (1960), and “La Belle et le Bete” (1946).

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Blacklight review: liam neeson's latest action thriller is nothing remarkable.

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There is a distinct aura to Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills in the Taken franchise, which is mostly characterized by covert operations, missing family, shootouts, and revenge best served cold. Mark Williams’ Blacklight   is reminiscent of Taken in many ways — mainly due to the nature of Neeson’s role — but is ultimately a different film, although the end result is an average genre offering. Although interesting enough to keep audiences hooked with its tense car chases and shootouts, Blacklight sets no new thrills for hardcore action fans.

Blacklight opens with covert FBI operative Travis Block (Neeson) extracting an agent from a deep-cover situation, which generally takes dogged determination and a proclivity for orchestrating dangerous distractions (like blowing up an entire house). Block reports directly to FBI chief Robinson (Aidan Quinn) — for whom he works on an “off-the-books” basis, with no questions asked — as the two seem to share a close friendship. Amidst juggling his dangerous assignments, Block wishes to spend more time with his daughter Amanda (Claire Van Der Boom) and young granddaughter Natalie (Gabriella Sengos) but fails to meet their expectations. Block’s Obsessive-Compulsion, coupled with his constant paranoia due to the nature of his job, makes it difficult for him to maintain a balance between family and work.

RELATED:  Liam Neeson Is Surprised He Is Still Being Cast In Action Movies

After the mysterious death of an anti-government activist named Sofia Flores, undercover FBI agent Dusty (Taylor John Smith) goes rogue as he claims to have sensitive information about the bureau’s unethical methods. Attempting to get in touch with journalist Mira (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Dusty evades Block’s interventions to bring him in peacefully, only to be murdered in broad daylight by unknown agents. This incident, coupled with Mira’s increasing questions about the bureau’s true motives, forces Block to re-evaluate his own position in the status quo, wherein he must make a decision as to whether he will simply turn a blind eye to injustice or directly combat it. Naturally, this would mean endangering the safety of his family, while risking being a pariah in the eyes of Robinson.

Narratively, Blacklight plays out like a run-of-the-mill action thriller, following the archetypes of the morally-gray protagonist, the wronged operative, and the truth-seeking journalist. The pacing is frenetic enough to keep the story moving forward, and Block’s character is fleshed out fairly well, at least within the capacity of the primary storyline. The greatest strength of the film is its action sequences, particularly the chase sequence between Block and Dusty, and the tense confrontation towards the end of the film. There’s mention of a shadowy program named Operation Unity, which warrants the killing of innocent citizens for reasons unknown.

The term COINTELPRO is thrown around once or twice, although no attempt is made to reveal the exact nature of Operation Unity or the extent of its reach and consequences. Neeson assumes the garb of Block fairly comfortably, playing a man torn between carrying out his orders and spending more quality time with his family. Quinn and Raver-Lampman play their parts fairly well, driving Blacklight to its inevitable finish. There is nothing remarkable or special about Blacklight  — it's fairly empty, a boilerplate series of dialogue, action, dialogue. However, it is fun to witness Neeson do what he does so well and lose oneself in the thrilling familiarity of hand-to-hand combat and shootouts.

NEXT:  Liam Neeson Uncovers A Government Conspiracy in Blacklight Movie Trailer

Blacklight will be released in theaters on February 11, 2022. The film is 105 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for strong violence, action, and language.

Liam Neeson stars in this 2022 Thriller and Action film directed by Mark Williams. Neeson plays Travis Block, a Fixer utilized by the FBI to bring in one of their undercover agents. Things aren't exactly what they seem and a conspiracy unravels.

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Blacklight REVIEW – A Ho-Hum Political Thriller

Not even your grandpa will like it.

It’ll be fourteen years since Pierre Morel’s Taken was released, a movie that shifted Liam Neeson’s career and reduced him to a typecast where a gruff alpha male “with a particular set of skills” would save the day from the over-the-top threat of the day. Some have been very good, which include all of his collaborations with Jaume Collet-Serra, while others, Taken trilogy included, are unbearable to watch. His latest movie Blacklight, directed by Honest Thief helmer Mark Williams, may very well be one of his worst “particular set of skills” action flicks yet, with a barely coherent plot stitching together barely coherent action sequences featuring Neeson’s usual brand of light slapping.

By light slapping, I mean Neeson barely punching whoever he’s trying to defeat. The shaky camera and random cuts will try to hide it, but we can clearly see him tackle someone with very little effort, with the rapid editing doing all of the heavy lifting. This time around, Neeson is thwarted inside a political conspiracy, in which the FBI randomly kills innocent people for…reasons. It starts with the death of congress hopeful Sofia Flores from a planned hit-and-run by FBI director Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn).

No one knows why she died, but whistleblower Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith) may have an idea and seeks the help of journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman) to tell her the truth. But FBI Agent Travis Block (Neeson) is hunting him down to make sure he never speaks, at the request of Robinson, until he learns that Robinson is behind Flores’ assassination.

The most frustrating thing about this movie is that no one ever explains why or how Flores’ assassination serves the plot. It wants to be an action film that will uncover a political conspiracy and expose the FBI’s corruption, but without a goal from the antagonist, the entire movie feels pointless. Undercooked plot aside, Aidan Quinn is a barely convincing villain, doing a poor man’s imitation of Anthony Michael Hall meets Dan O’Herlihy without an ounce of the expressive power of those two actors. He’s such a powerful antagonist that he orders his henchmen around, but never seems to want to confront Travis for some reason.

So yeah, as “powerful” as Robinson is, he’s completely weightless without motivation. Because of this, the entire movie falters completely with plenty of pointless scenes that explain absolutely nothing. There are lots of “walking and talking” between journalists trying to uncover the conspiracy, even if we have no idea what on earth they’re uncovering, and conversations between Travis and Mira that lead absolutely nowhere.

There are also lots of supposedly “heartfelt” moments between Travis and his granddaughter Natalie (Gabriella Sengos), which always end in the same cyclical “your paranoia is contagious” bit Travis’ daughter (Claire van der Boom) tells him. Travis doesn’t help his cause by giving Natalie (a toddler) a taser for her birthday or installing security cameras after the granddaughter confesses to him that a “stranger” keeps following them.

None of the action sequences are particularly memorable either. Sure, they’re hindered by the shaky cam and horrendous close-ups, but strip those away and you still get the most standard action sequences possible; gunfights with absolutely no style or personality, car chases that don’t do anything to wow the audiences away, and a plethora of Taken-esque confrontations that lack grit. Neeson sleepwalks through his entire performance, as if he’s ready to become the next Bruce Willis. And it’s quite a shame to see Neeson clearly doing this for the money, instead of legitimately enjoying himself, as he did with Collet-Serra’s films, or Hans Patter Moland’s terrific Cold Pursuit.

Nearing 70, Neeson has said multiple times that he would quit action movies “for good,” but that plan has never come to fruition. Another paycheck, and he’s doing them again. And while, yes, his movies have always been successful, the bit is getting tiresome, fast. In any case, Blacklight makes the perfect case for Liam Neeson to step away from action movies and focus on more dramatic roles. Unless Jaume Collet-Serra comes back for one last “particular set of skills” thriller. Now that would be amazing.

READ NEXT: 15 Best Action Movies on Amazon Prime Video

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Blacklight Review: Deep State Actioner Starring Liam Neeson Misfires Badly

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Blacklight is a tedious, deep state conspiracy actioner that misfires on all fronts. Liam Neeson , normally a sure bet for action junkies, looks lost in an obvious and melodramatic narrative. This time around he stars as an FBI black operations fixer who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The film also uses bizarre double-take edits that adds a confusing element to several chase scenes. I can’t fathom what stylistic approach the filmmakers were gunning for. They definitely do not achieve it.

Blacklight opens with a shocking scene that’s unfortunately the most entertaining part of the film. We are introduced to Travis Block (Liam Neeson) as he rescues a frazzled, deep-cover FBI agent. Block is congratulated for his efficiency by FBI Director Gabriel Robinson (Aiden Quinn). The men have been friends for decades. Block is Robinson’s tool for handling his clandestine problems. He has another urgent mission for his fixer. Another undercover agent, Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), seems to be having a mental breakdown.

Travis Block wants a stronger relationship with his daughter (Claire van der Bloom) and young granddaughter. She worries that his obsessive behavior and paranoia is affecting the child. Block’s efforts to bring in the rogue agent hit a stumbling block. Crane has reached out to a reporter, Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), with a bombshell story. Block must choose between unquestioned duty or investigating if Crane’s awful allegations are true.

Blacklight has a lazy script that’s devoid of common sense. The film suffers from a major flaw that cripples the plot from the start. The antagonist is revealed early in the first act. We then have to watch as Block bumbles around trying to reveal an enemy that’s plain as day. This makes zero sense if Block is supposedly an elite operative. The same logic applies to the reporter. She has multiple encounters with Crane but somehow cannot put the pieces together. Mira Jones will not win a Pulitzer for investigative journalism.

Director Mark Williams previously worked with Liam Neeson on Honest Thief and as producer of The Marksman. I am surprised by the clunky and disjointed nature of this film. The family scenes are forced and awkward. The OCD subplot comes off as completely unnecessary. The gunplay and car chases are interrupted by the odd editing choices. My expectations for Blacklight were somewhat high. It’s hard to believe this star and filmmaker have an established history. They clearly take a step back with this effort.

Blacklight does not work as a pure action film. I want to be clear. The action is not terrible. You can see that ample money was spent on stunts, explosions, and numerous vehicle collisions. String all those scenes together and you have twenty minutes of runtime. That’s not enough to rescue Blacklight from a slew of puzzling errors. I’ll continue to watch every Liam Neeson film, but will quickly forget this one. Blacklight is produced by Zero Gravity Management, Footloose Productions, and Sina Studios. It will be released theatrically on February 11th from Briarcliff Entertainment and Open Road Films.

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Strange Darling review: "Move over Longlegs, another independent serial-killer horror is set to make a splash"

GamesRadar+ Verdict

A smart thriller that twists like a killer’s blade in the gut. Go in cold.

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Turns out Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs isn’t the only independent serial-killer movie to make a splash this year. In late August, Strange Darling, by writer/director JT Mollner (2016’s Outlaws and Angels), landed in the US to a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only that, it was warmly endorsed on X by no less than Stephen King: "It’s really terrific," wrote the horror author, "… a clever masterpiece."

Separated into six chapters (plus an epilogue) presented in non-linear fashion, this horror-thriller at first appears like it might be a bit too clever for its own good. But before long it emerges that the time-hopping, flip-flopping structure is actually in place for shrewd narrative reasons. Our initial assumptions are craftily toyed with as we’re drip-fed titbits of information while watching a one-night stand spiral into a spree of killings in the state of Oregon.

Boasting great music cues, vivid 35mm lensing (by, of all people, Avatar actor Giovanni Ribisi, who here makes his classy debut as director of photography), and engaging gender politics that establish Mollner’s interest in more than just the thrill of the chase, Strange Darling is a slick game of cat and mouse. 

That it keeps viewers invested and wired throughout is also down to a brace of terrific central performances: Kyle Gallner (2022’s Scream , Smile) oozes charm and menace as The Demon, while Willa Fitzgerald ( Scream: The TV Series , Reacher ), simply credited as The Lady, is sure as hell gonna make sure that he remembers her name

Strange Darling is released in UK cinemas on September 20 and is in US theaters now.

For more, check out all the upcoming horror movies you should have on your radar.

Jamie Graham is the Editor-at-Large of Total Film magazine. You'll likely find them around these parts reviewing the biggest films on the planet and speaking to some of the biggest stars in the business – that's just what Jamie does. Jamie has also written for outlets like SFX and the Sunday Times Culture, and appeared on podcasts exploring the wondrous worlds of occult and horror. 

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Movie Review: ‘Transformers One,’ an origin story no one wants with brutality levels no one needs

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows characters, from left, D-16/Megatron, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Orion Pax/Optimus Prime, voiced by Chris Hemsworth, and B-127, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows character B-127, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows character Sentinel Prime, voiced by Jon Hamm, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows character D-16/Megatron, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows character Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows character Orion Pax/Optimus Prime, voiced by Chris Hemsworth, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

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Movie origin stories finally reach their nadir this week with “Transformers One,” the super-violent, toy-selling vehicle that tells the tale of how Optimus Prime and Megatron went from besties to foes. Did anyone ask for this? Did Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner ask for too much money?

The computer-animated “Transformers One” is out of time, a throwback to a few years ago when Hollywood mined popular IP for forgotten heroes, built overly complex worlds and then ramped up the action so that the audience just got numbed to a blur of battles. But “Transformers One” isn’t good enough to watch on a plane, even a trans-Pacific flight. The inflight map is better.

A map isn’t a bad idea, actually: You may need some sort of guide for this one — those uninitiated to the folklore of Cybertron are flung helplessly into references to Energon, Alpha Trion, Quintessons and something called the Matrix of Leadership. You come in halfway into a conversation.

The story by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari is basically the Bible’s Cain and Abel with a detour into the Roman Empire and the Hasbro figurines’ accumulated mythology, which seems to be a series of never-ending epic battles between good and evil. Some stuff just seems downright weird, like why these robots need a gym or why after running they become breathless.

The main heroes here are buddies Orion Pax and D-16 — who will become mortal enemies Optimus Prime and Megatron by the end — and we meet them when they are lowly miners, basically non-transforming bots digging for reserves of the energy cleverly called Energon. This is a society in which the upper class is made up of Transformers who stomp around preening while the lower classes do dirty jobs like comb through garbage.

They all serve Sentinel Prime, the leader of the subterranean Iacon City, who is not what he seems. He is apparently the last of the Primes and lives in a marble palace, giving the people below spectacles as a diversion, like an epic road race. It gives off ancient Roman Coliseum vibes.

Orion Pax (voiced with puppy-dog sweetness by Chris Hemsworth) is not satisfied by this life. “There’s got to be something more I can do,” he says. “Aren’t you tired of being treated like you’re nothing?” Brian Tyree Henry voices D-16 with skepticism and resignation.

The two friends join with mining manager Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson, bland) and Keegan-Michael Key’s B-127 (who will later become fan favorite Bumblebee) to journey to the surface of the planet, find the Matrix of Leadership (a sort of necklace that might have been sold in the Sharper Image catalog) and get a hero’s welcome. But they learn some unsavory things about the ruler from the Transformer elder statesman Alpha Trion (the instantly recognizable Laurence Fishburne).

Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

Director Josh Cooley, who co-wrote the screenplay for “Inside Out” and helmed “Toy Story 4,” never lets the action stop — and that’s not a compliment. The camera is constantly swiveling and the violence — assault-weapon lasers, booming cannons, light torture, martial arts crunching moves, beating a rival with their own amputated limb and ceaseless pounding — is nauseating. (“Please stop punching me in the face” is a joke line here.) If Transformers ever bled, this would be an R-rated movie.

The hyper-violence papers over some pretty robotic — sorry! — dialogue. Why do all these movies show the Transformers with cool upgrades like laser knives but they remain speaking in stilted, operatic prose? “I want him to suffer and die in darkness,” “They are to be your undoing” and “Cybertron’s future is in your hands.”

There are some good moments, of course. When our band of misfit bots get an upgrade to Transformer status, they cutely don’t know how to do it seamlessly at first, with limbs awkwardly getting mixed with vehicle parts. Anyone who has played with the toys knows the feeling. And Key never fails to generate a chuckle, proving a masterful comedic voice actor.

B-127, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, in a scene from “Transformers One.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

The other actors — Jon Hamm and Steve Buscemi, included — hardly register and the movie’s main song — “If I Fall” by Quavo, Ty Dolla $ign and Brian Tyler’s Are We Dreaming — feels like AI wrote both the uninteresting rap-rock beat and soupy lyrics (“I’m the alpha, omega, got lights on me, Vegas.” Vegas?)

The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the wastefulness of another dull outing in a universe geared toward kids just learning to transform themselves. The lessons here, unfortunately, are that friends can become enemies overnight and you only win if you beat someone hard enough. “We’re better than this,” Orion Pax screams at his sudden rival at one point. No, they’re not.

“Transformers One,” a Paramount release that lands in theaters Friday, is rated PG for “sci-fi violence and animated action throughout, and language.” Running time: 103 minutes. Half a star out of four.

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Trapezium has one of the most cunning and manipulative protagonists in anime

It’s a fascinating character study about one girl and the scope of her ambition

by Petrana Radulovic

I went into Trapezium , the new anime movie from CloverWorks ( Spy x Family , Bocchi the Rock! ), expecting what the official summary promised: a slice-of-life anime about a group of friends with big dreams of becoming idols, and a series of conflicts to navigate while they grapple with the rigorous music industry and the perils of fame.

But this movie — the latest anime film playing in American theaters for a one-day-only special engagement — isn’t really about four girls and their big dreams. It’s actually a compelling character study of one of the most manipulative, cunning characters I’ve seen in anime.

[ Ed. note: This post contains significant spoilers for Trapezium .]

Based on a light novel by former Japanese idol group member Kazumi Takayama, Trapezium follows a high school student named Yu Azuma, who has big dreams of becoming an idol. But she’s well aware of her own limitations, so she knows she needs a gimmick to catapult herself to stardom. She decides she needs to meet and befriend three other beautiful, talented girls, one from each of the high schools in her hometown, so their group represents the four cardinal directions.

Yu sets off on her quest, first traveling through an affluent academy in the south, where she zeroes in on gorgeous Ranko Katori and challenges her to a tennis match to win her friendship. Then she hits up a vocational school in the west, specifically looking for Kurumi Taiga, the sole female member of the robotics team, who enjoyed a brief stint of viral fame for being a girl in STEM at a prestigious competition. Kurumi is initially uninterested in meeting her, so Yu feigns interest in robotics, then finds a way to help Kurumi meet her goals.

When Yu unintentionally reunites with her old classmate Mika Kamei, Yu is initially reserved — until she learns that Mika is not only beautiful and regularly does charity work (a good look for idols, who must maintain pristine reputations), but she happens to go to school in the north, the cardinal direction Yu is missing. She’s the final piece Yu needs for her master plan.

Yu never lets the other girls know about her grand ambitions, even as she organizes increasingly specific ways to get them into the spotlight. When they’re split up at an event where they volunteer to help kids in wheelchairs up a scenic mountain hiking path, Yu throws a small fit. In her mind, the excursion isn’t worth it if they aren’t seen together for a potential social media picture. But Yu tells the others her bad mood is because she wanted to spend time with them, which they buy wholeheartedly.

That isn’t the first indication of the extent of Yu’s manipulation, but it’s certainly the one that really showcases just how she’ll warp her friends’ affections to further her goals. She constantly pushes her friends to go along with her plans, whether or not they actually want to. She insists each new scheme is just for the sake of doing something fun together, as if she hasn’t been strategically planning her ascent to stardom for years. She’s unapologetically ruthless, in a way that I did not expect from a movie billed as “four teenage girls with big dreams.”

I expected something more like Bocchi the Rock! , where a similar set of girls with musical ambitions forge wholesome bonds as they collectively figure out how to launch their career. But instead, Trapezium unfolds like a tense psychological thriller, focused tightly on Yu, the scope of her ambition, and the lengths she’ll go to in order to make her dreams a reality. She treats her supposed friends like necessary tools in her greater scheme, instead of actual humans. She’s absolutely ruthless as she concocts her plans in her downtime, though to her friends she comes off as someone who’s just very passionate (it helps that she fudges the truth in order to get her friends to go along with her plans). She’s also a bit of a sore loser, pouting when she receives less attention than the other group members, and snapping at her friends once everything begins to spiral.

But at the same time, she’s never outright mean. And she wants to be an idol so badly that it’s hard not to root for her a little bit. She’s a fascinating character, deeply flawed and almost borderline cruel, but her sheer determination is admirable. And even though she starts out seeing the other girls as puzzle pieces, it’s evident that she does begin to actually care for them — even if she doesn’t realize it herself. Throughout the movie, I vacillated on finding her admirable, scary, and even a bit pitiable. What I did solidly know, though, was that she hooked me in, and I couldn’t look away from her story as it unfolded on screen.

A lot about Trapezium ’s story could stand to dig deeper, especially when it comes to really diving into the ramifications of idol life, fame, and the group’s eventual reconciliation. But what the movie does wonderfully is give a tight, tense look at one girl, the sheer scope of her ambition, and what happens when a perfect plan begins to crack.

Crunchyroll will premiere Trapezium in American theaters for a one-day-only special showing on Sept. 18. Polygon will update this post when Crunchyroll announces a streaming date for the movie.

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‘Transformers One’ Review: Back to the Beginning

An animated prequel maps out a tidy mythology while indulging in the toy-smashing thrills of the ’80s cartoons.

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By Brandon Yu

When settling into “Transformers One,” the latest spinoff of the alien robot franchise, you may have a pang of nostalgia for what suddenly feels like the quaint mayhem of Michael Bay’s original film from 2007.

Back then, “Transformers” was about as much of a ludicrous commercial tent pole as you could come up with: Bayhem unleashed on a Hasbro toy. The franchise that film spawned has managed to extend its life force well into a movie era defined by intellectual property equations. Say what you will about Bay’s metal masher, but it was, in its early goings, a blockbuster that had its own ethos. Now, 17 years later, we’re down to an animated prequel for kids.

This is all what a cynic may think at the start of “Transformers One.” But by the end, the film offers a different kind of nostalgia, one that harks back to and indulges the toy-smashing thrills that an ’80s kid would get from a dose of the original animated cartoons.

This movie, directed by Josh Cooley, scraps everything we associate with its cinematic forebears and goes back to the beginning, creating, on a structural level, an effective origin story of the Transformers universe.

Before Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) were enemies, they were best friends and young nobodies, two miners toiling away as part of an underclass that provided the energy for the planet of Cybertron.

But after unwittingly finding a clue to the long-lost Matrix of Leadership, the vital key to the their world’s energy, they, along with Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and a young Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key), embark on an adventure and uncover a conspiracy that shifts both the fabric of the planet and of their friendship.

It’s a completist piece of lore-building that is sturdily developed but frequently includes stiffly explicative dialogue; Hemsworth and Johansson don’t help much, though Henry gives us a believable transformation into villainy and Key is dexterous comic relief. The missteps can be forgiven and even feel somewhat appropriate when it becomes clear just what kind of itch the film means to scratch: to plot out an immersive mythology in order to have some pulpy fun.

That philosophy may explain the film’s confounding computer-generated style — one that can have a rich Cybertron universe but also can revert to what feels like a B-rate children’s TV spinoff. The result is a blockbuster animation film that somehow reads both very expensive and inexplicably cheap.

Will fans care all that much, though? Most palpable in its frames are the heart and genuine love for this universe, and when the bots start colliding, with action sequences toward the end that are thrillingly punchy, it’s easy to surrender to the lore. In this way, Cooley’s film makes a good spinoff suddenly seem simple: Sometimes all you need is the imagination for heroes and villains, betrayal and glory — and heaps of plastic to smash together.

Transformers One Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.