Liam Neeson – The Magnificent 60s

Kingdom of Heaven (2005) ***

I’m conscious of entering contentious waters especially as a new 4K DVD edition of the 195-minute Director’s Cut – expanded from the original 144-minute version – is being released by Twentieth Century Fox to coincide with today’s theatrical 20^th anniversary theatrical release. Normally, that would have filled me with joy because I was a huge fan of the original Director’s Cut, which, it is true, added considerable depth to the film as initially screened.

But in watching the Director’s Cut as the first part of a proposed All-Time Top Ten double bill with Any Given Sunday (1999) I discovered to my horror it was not the film I remembered and had for many years championed. The flaws were all too obvious, it was extremely wordy, rammed full of characters and a narrative that ran all over the place trying to keep up with itself.

We should begin with the major flaw and that’s the casting of Orlando Bloom, fresh from his breakthrough role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), as Balian the blacksmith. The role was written for Russell Crowe but schedule clash prevented his involvement. Director Ridley Scott went ahead anyway and Bloom doesn’t remotely convince as a leader.

Though most of the picture is based on historical fact, the initial MacGuffin doesn’t make sense. For the purposes of the narrative we need to get blacksmith Balian to the Crusades. Balian’s wife (Nathalie Cox), seen briefly (and happily) in flashback, has committed suicide because of a miscarriage which seems a mighty odd reason, and we are never made privy to whatever other mental problems afflicted her. In those days, if you committed suicide you could not be buried in sacred ground and furthermore your head was chopped off. Now, admittedly, the local priest (Michael Sheen), Balian’s half-brother, is a creepy character, but it hardly seems to justify Balian thrusting a sword through his heart and setting him on fire.

But, don’t you know it, if you run off to the Crusades you win a get-out-of-jail-free card rather than being hung for your crime. So Balian joins up with his dad Godfrey (Liam Neeson) who has returned briefly from the Crusades and initially been rejected by his son. They’re attacked by soldiers seeking to arrest Balian but, wouldn’t you know it, after a few lessons from his old man, Balian turns out to be an ace swordsman.

Eventually, after a few adventures and shipwreck and fortuitous encounter with Muslim Imad a-Din – remember the name because he later plays a critical role – he reaches Jerusalem and is confronted with a wordfest, a heavy distillation of philosophy, a narrative that flits around fragile peace between Christian and Muslim, and woman of intrigue Sibylla (Eva Green) whose husband Guy happens to be the leader of the anti-Muslim forces.

It might have helped if Godfrey hadn’t inconveniently died, of wounds while protecting his son, because Liam Neeson strikes you immediately as a leader and not the kind of actor like Bloom who is only a leader because the script says so. Anyways, before we can get down to any of the stirring and visually commanding action for which Ridley Scott is rightly acclaimed, Balian, who remember is a blacksmith, turns before our eyes into a wizard of an engineer and before you know it a parched piece of land is fully irrigated. It’s a lovely sequence, to be sure, and accompanied by my favorite piece of music (score by Harry Gregson-Smith) in the film, but not particularly believable.

Nor is the romance, Sibylla now deciding on adultery with her husband’s enemy. And, again, to be sure, much of the extra footage does fill out her character, but that still leaves a jumble of other characters fighting for political power – the dying masked King of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV (Edward Norton), a leper; City Marshal Tiberias (Jeremy Irons); the aforementioned Guy and his sidekick Raynald (Brendan Gleeson); assorted Knight Templars who are ferociously anti-Muslim; and parked outside the city gates Muslin chief Saladin (Ghassan Massoud).

The story, if you can still keep sight of it amongst all this intrigue, is that Guy and Raynald and the Knights Templar want to spark a Holy War, ending years of peace, restoring Jerusalem to sole ownership of the Christians, rather than being equally shared (though, noticeably, no Muslims on any of the ruling factions).

Anyway, eventually, after we’re done with philosophizing and Balian making hay with Sibylla, we get to the action and at last the movie takes flight, and though you no longer particularly believe in Balian as a leader of men he does show some tactical awareness. There’s a superb pitched battle against superior forces and a magnificent siege. Written by William Monahan (The Departed, 2006).

But watching the Director’s Cut again I came away wishing for the shorter version, though very little could compensate for the casting of Orlando Bloom.

I might change my mind if I get to see it in the cinema again but for the moment it’s lost its coveted place in my All-Time Top Ten.

Unknown (2011) ****

Water contains a miraculous ingredient when it comes to assassins. A good dunking in the ocean (The Bourne Identity, 2002) or a river (here) and suddenly a) they suffer memory black-out and b) they refute their apparent careers as assassins and show such remorse they turn against their employers.

Businessman Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and wife Liz (January Jones) arrive in Berlin for a high-tech biotech conference, but he leaves his briefcase behind at the airport and when he goes to collect it ends up in a collision on a bridge, falls into said river (the Spree), rescued by illegal immigrant taxi driver Gina (Diane Kruger). After four days in a coma, suffering from loss of memory as well as, critically, his passport, he is treated as an imposter at the hotel, his wife escorting a different Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn).

Pursued by killer Smith (Olivier Schneider) and apparent old buddy Rodney Cole (Frank Langella), only gradually, with the help of an initially reluctant Gina and a former Stasi agent Ernst (Bruno Ganz) does he begin to uncover a conspiracy in which he was to play a central role, namely the murder of Professor Bressler (Sebastian Koch) who has developed some genetically modified crop that will solve the problems of famine worldwide and rather than cashing in on his discovery plans to give it away for free. Shades of the current Day of the Jackal in how such generosity of spirit will upset the financial system.

Twists and red herrings abound, not all of them so plausible, but the movie zips along at such a pace and Martin plays such a befuddled angry patient that you are carried along with considerable zest. Expect a couple of car chases, de rigeur for the subgenre, but the identity confusion plays a large part in making this work. Add in a nascent romance between Martin and Gina, and the setting up of a false romance between Martin and Liz and it zings along quite happily.

Some of the set pieces are quite stunning. A refrigerator coming loose on the back of a lorry instigates the dousing in the river, and the rescue is superb. But there’s humanity and character at work, too, excellent scenes with Gina’s boss bemoaning his lack of insurance cover, Gina herself stuck in transient life, the virtual hovels in which transients live, cardboard walls offering no security, and always someone likely to come charging through a door or a window. Ernst is a super creation, another in need of redemption, clutching the few principles he has left.

But if you need a character to reveal depths of anguish who also needs to be fit enough to do a lot of running around then there’s no better actor than Liam Neeson. He’d done plenty of the actorly stuff earlier in his career with a few turns into action (The A-Team, Batman Begins, The Phantom Menace anybody?) that had detracted from his marquee value and he only really became big box office after the unexpected success, when well into his 50s, of Taken (2008).

Diane Kruger had come through the ranks with Troy (2003) and National Treasure (2006) but consistent top billing had evaded her, which is a shame because she can bring considerable depths to a part, as she shows here, and she was easily the best thing about The 355 (2022). She was reunited with Neeson for Marlowe (2022).

Jaume Collet-Serra became the Neeson go-to director, re-teaming with the actor for Non-Stop (2014), Run All Night (2015) and The Commuter (2018) and he’s a past master at juggling all the narrative balls, even if some of them don’t make much sense. The detection element, as Martin tries to discover his identity, the slice-of-Berlin-life, the trapped Gina, and the unfolding chaos all make this play very well and it only falls apart in the last section when we have to accept that he’s Bourne-again and chasing redemption while the time-ticking bomb plot element is so old hat.

Still, one of my favorite action pictures.

Retribution (2023) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Take a renowned screen tough guy and turn him into a nervous wreck. Stick a bomb under his car seat. Hobble him further by saddling him with his kids in the back. Ensure he is so frazzled by constant explosions that he lacks the time to do the clever things that heroes in his position, no matter how dicey the situation, generally manage. And the usual running and gunplay is out of the question. Screw that lid down tight.

And play around with Liam Neeson’s Taken (2008) screen persona, show him demolishing a punch bag at the very start to convince us he still has the cojones, with a special set of skills to take down the bad guys. But that image is quickly shredded.

Once he is blamed for a series of devastating car explosions and can’t escape the electronic voice in his ear and the bad guy five steps ahead of everyone, this just ramps up the stakes and in the Neeson portfolio nestles a shade below Unknown (2011) where the actor was equally disorientated, though that time by amnesia.

Matt (Liam Neeson) is a financier having a tough time. It’s just his bad luck he needs to take the kids, rebellious Zach (Jack Champion) and precocious Emily (Lilly Aspinall), to school because, unknown to him, wife Heather (Embeth Davidz) needs time out to consult a divorce lawyer. Now he’s being held hostage in his own car by a tech whiz kidnapper.

Sure, there are shades of Speed (1994) but thank goodness fewer echoes of the likes of Phone Booth (2002) and a few plot holes and a fair bit of misdirection – wife Heather (Embeth Davidz) perhaps having a lesbian affair, financial shenanigans catching up with him, mysterious motorcyclist on his tail – but precisely because Matt has no leeway and the running time is lean (under 90 minutes once you remove the credits) it works like a dream. Just no let-up.

There’s a surprise reveal at the end and a neat get-out-of-jail that Bryan Mills in his element might have dreamed up but mostly it’s pedal-to-the-metal.

After a few direct-to-streaming losers like Marlowe (2022), this is Neeson back at his best, relying far more on his acting talent than his action chops. Even the title is against type. Mention the word retribution and you expect it will be the actor doing the seeking, not being its object.

With the exception of Schindler’s List (1993) – and that’s three decades away – most people can’t remember when Liam Neeson was being touted as a genuine Oscar contender. Producers didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Every star turn in a compelling drama was accompanied by a supporting role in some big-budget extravaganza (not least his Star Wars episodes). And, miraculously, just as it appeared his career was winding down, he reinvented himself as Bryan Mills and was forever typecast in thrillers, but the law of diminishing returns meant that he was as synonymous with Nicolas Cage in making pictures that couldn’t get a cinema release break.

Here’s a movie that depends entirely on facial expression. And no escape from that. Which means relying on whatever he can tick in the acting box. Which, luckily, Neeson still has in spades.

This is kind of movie Sky used to make, a low-budget effort with a big name down on his luck, killed off by poor production values and low-end direction. But if this is the way Sky is heading, upping its game in the face of Netflix and Apple’s clever manipulation of cinematic release, then this movie deserves a wider showing.

Remake of a 2015 Spanish picture, directed by Dani de la Tore and scripted by Alberto Marini, the new version sticks to the knitting, no complicated sub-plots involving the kids, just them sitting in the back waiting to become collateral damage.

Nimrod Antal (Predators, 2010) does an excellent job teasing out the tale, throwing in a car chase through the streets of Berlin, but keeping the camera squarely on the trapped trio. With an inferior star, this could easily have failed to grip, but Neeson pulls it off with ease.

If you can’t catch it in the cinema, where my guess it will only last a week, put it on your must-watch list elsewhere.

Destined to become a DVD “sleeper.”

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