Capsule Review: Retribution (2023)
The prospect of having Liam Neeson in the lead role and director Nimród Antal of Vacancy and Predators fame, calling the shots seems promising. Then, there’s the storytelling hook — a Speed-like action-thriller vibe but instead of a bomb on the bus, we have a bomb in the car. Mercedes SUV, to be exact.
We first met investment banker Matt Turner (Neeson), who barely had time to communicate with his wife, Heather (Embeth Davidtz). He is always busy working around the clock. When she wants him to drive their kids (Jack Champion’s Zach and Lilly Aspell’s Emily) to school, he reluctantly agrees to do so.
So, while en route in his Mercedes SUV with the kids in the backseat, we see him spending most of the time talking to his client on the phone. Then, there’s a mysterious phone ringing somewhere in the car and neither it belongs to him, his kids nor even their mom. He picks it up anyway and soon, a distorted voice from the other end of the line tells him there’s a pressure-sensor bomb underneath his seat. If he tries to get out of the car, the bomb will explode.
Matt is forced to obey whatever rules the caller tells him to do. As he keeps driving with his kids starts panicking at the back, he tries to figure out what the caller wants from him. If that’s not enough, the caller even proves his point that he means business when one of his co-workers ends up dead in a car explosion.
In what could have been a tense race-against-time action thriller, Retribution — which turns out to be the third remake after the original Spanish version in 2015 and South Korea’s Hard Hit (2021) — suffers from limp storytelling. There’s no sense of high-octane thrills or dramatic urgency. It looks as if the movie is stuck in first gear from start to end. Even with Antal’s subsequent attempt to ratchet up the tension with a car chase later in the movie, it’s hard to feel any excitement or adrenalin rush whatsoever.
Chris Salmanpour, whose only prior credit was TV’s FBI: Most Wanted, sticks to the basic Die Hard on a (fill in the blank) storytelling template. It’s as painfully formulaic as it goes and it doesn’t help the characters are all perfunctorily written.
Not even the calibre of Liam Neeson can do much to salvage this tedious slog. Sure, we get to see his usual no-nonsense charisma and don’t-mess-with-me persona. But it hardly matters since Antal seems to be clueless about what to do to make his character worthwhile. The kids, played by Jack Champion and Lilly Aspell, are annoying while the rest of the supporting cast, namely Embeth Davidtz and Matthew Modine, where the latter plays Matt’s boss is reduced to thankless roles.
Then comes the identity of the mysterious caller. If you watch enough of this kind of movie, you can more or less guess who’s the mastermind here. The movie also introduces the police led by Angela Brickmann (Noma Dumezweni), who largely appear in an elaborate roadblock scene trying to negotiate with Matt since she suspected him as the bomber. This scene alone drags on and on with little dramatic momentum, despite Dumezweni’s assured portrayal of a detective-in-charge who maintains composure dealing with the situation.
Liam Neeson may have appeared in several generic duds these days. But seriously, he deserved better than what we get here in Retribution. This is easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in 2023.
