Liam Neeson's worst film according to Rotten Tomatoes

There was a time when Liam Neeson played a variety of roles, including as the titular benevolent industrialist in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, for which he received an Oscar nomination, and as Michael Collins in Neil Jordan's biopic about the Irish revolutionary . But at some point, the Irishman decided that he would focus solely on playing grizzled badasses in a series of films that, frankly, have all merged into a single film in this writer's mind.

It began with Taken, Neeson's hit 2008 action film in which he portrayed a former CIA officer who embarks on a violent search for his kidnapped daughter. The film spawned two sequels, a TV series and, as Witney Seibold noted in /Film's ranking of “Taken” films, an entire subgenre: “Liam Neeson's post-'Taken' subgenre is a violent type .” 2022’s “Blacklight” is an example of this very specific genre and, simply put, not very good. Certainly “Blacklight” isn’t “Taken,” even if it tries to use the same preternaturally competent badass archetype that Neeson established in that original film.

To be clear, Blacklight isn't a Taken movie, but it still is. The film is directed and co-written by Mark Williams, known for “Ozark”. In the film, Neeson plays FBI fixer Travis Block, for whom murder, to quote his character, is “off the agenda.” But killing soon becomes Block's favorite pastime after he uncovers a government conspiracy involving his own agency harassing people in the name of national security. Block tries to retire from the FBI, but is prevented from doing so by his boss. This culminates in the fixer's family being kidnapped: cue Liam Neeson, who beats and shoots people. It’s “Taken,” it’s a “Taken” movie.

Williams also directed Neeson in the 2020 film “Honest Thief,” which currently has a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While this may seem like a weak effort from the duo, it's a lot better than the score for Blacklight.

Any film fan will know that Rotten Tomatoes should not be viewed as the arbiter of cinema. This site claims that, after all, there are only two perfect horror films ever made. But that doesn't mean the aggregator can't provide a vague overview of films and their overall quality. If we were to use this to sum up Liam Neeson's career, for example, we would immediately see that Blacklight is worth avoiding entirely.

At the time of writing, Blacklight has a truly dismal Rotten Tomatoes score of just 11%. Again, this is based on a total of 105 reviews, so you can be pretty sure that this movie is just as much of a doozy as this review suggests. If you look a little closer, the film's average score – a sum of the actual star, grade, and number ratings given to the film by critics – is a slightly more respectable 4.10 out of 10. However, there's no denying the fact , that “Blacklight” is simply one of many “Taken”-style Neeson action films that failed to transcend their highly derivative, trite approach to filmmaking.

In the Rotten Tomatoes ranking of Neeson's films, “Blacklight” is currently the worst-rated of his works. The film that comes closest is 2014's Taken 3, the sad conclusion to the trilogy that ushered in Neeson's unexpected action star makeover. This threequel currently has a score of 13% based on 123 reviews. So if you've seen Taken 3, you should have a good idea of ​​what to expect from Blacklight. But just in case you're curious, it might be worth taking a look at what critics have to say about Mark Williams' ill-fated action thriller.

The critical consensus for Mark Williams and Liam Neeson's first collaboration, “Honest Thief,” describes a film “guilty of wastefulness of the first degree” and that “returns Liam Neeson to late-period action-thriller mode, but it failed to deliver much of the story.” Not exactly the most auspicious start for this director/star team – which begs the question of why on earth the two reunited for another film that was basically the same as her last stinker. In fact, the critical consensus on her sophomore effort, Blacklight, is one of the most damningly succinct examples on Rotten Tomatoes and is simply “Turn it off.”

What exactly did “Blacklight” do wrong? Given the film's membership in the Taken rip-off club, you probably have a good idea. But just so you're fully informed, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal summarized the film as “not a movie at all,” but merely a “rusted wastebasket full of incongruous themes, ideas, poses, conventions, affectations, tropes, tropes, and lazy snippets of dialogue.” other films. Glenn Kenny, writing for RogerEbert.com, suggested that the “Blacklight” script was “darkly threadbare aside from gross opportunism” and awarded Neeson's mistake a single star in 2022. The reviews continue like this: Critics describe the film as “a by-the-numbers action thriller,” as “unintentionally ridiculous,” and as “something of a disappointment.”

It goes without saying that unless you're a fan of watching the same Liam Neeson movie over and over again, Blacklight is probably one of those examples where Rotten Tomatoes actually got it right.