‘The Marksman’ explains why Liam Neeson retired from action movies

At 69 years old, the burden of age is weighing heavily on the shoulders of “veteran” Liam Neeson. And in the movie The Marksman , that is even more evident. Previously, Honest Thief (2020) and Made in Italy (2019) were two movies that signaled the retirement of the action star Taken, released in 2008.
Farm owner Jim Hanson lives alone in Southern Arizona, bordering Mexico. By chance, he witnesses the escape of a Mexican mother and son who are being hunted down by the mafia and have to cross the border to escape to the US. In her dying moments, the mother asks him to take her young son to her family in Chicago and Jim is forced to keep his word because he keeps thinking that it was because he tried to stop her that she was shot by the mafia. In return, he receives a large sum of money, enough to pay off the bank loan.

Liam Neeson and Joe Perez in The Marksman

PHOTO: IMDB

The Marksman describes the journey of an old man and a young man fleeing from Arizona to Chicago when the mafia, by bribing money, easily crossed the border to destroy them. Unlike Taken, where Liam Neeson plays the role of a father who “hunts” the kidnappers who take his daughter to a brothel, The Marksman turns him into prey. The film starts off impressively with a fast, suspenseful plot, but as it goes on, it gets… weaker.
Many details in the film are inserted haphazardly, making the film’s flow illogical. As someone who has lived for many years near the US-Mexico border, Jim Hanson does not know a word of Spanish (Mexicans speak Spanish) to talk to the boy Miguel (Joe Perez). Or the fact that Miguel was initially brought to Chicago because of the money his mother left behind, suddenly because of the boy’s statement that he did not want to touch the smugglers’ money, old man Jim Hanson burned a whole bag of money one night when he stopped by the roadside while running away, while he knew clearly that his house was burned down by smugglers and the bank debt was still hanging in the balance. The American police in the film either turned into people who specialize in accepting bribes from smugglers and were willing to help them, or were very naive in their profession in knowing that the Mexican mafia had infiltrated the US and let them do whatever they wanted during the entire chase of Jim Hanson and the boy.

Liam Neeson’s many slow action scenes are “salvaged” by sniper shots

PHOTO: IMDB

The plot and content of The Marksman are too predictable, so director Robert Lorenz focused on the action scenes. Unfortunately, this time it was even more absurd when the old man Jim Hanson fought hand-to-hand with a younger smuggler boss who was about 35-40 years old and still won in the end, although the fighting was quite slow and sluggish due to his age. The film added more sniper shots by Jim, which easily defeated the smugglers, even though Jim’s eyes were dim and his hands were shaking due to alcoholism. Partly because Robert Lorenz was a producer in director Clint Eastwood’s sniper movie American Sniper ( 2014), which won an Oscar, the director focused on “carefully” editing the sniper scenes to attract the audience. The camera angles of The Marksman are also not outstanding and the pace of the film gets slower towards the end, making the audience… exhausted!

Liam Neeson’s performance in this film is far from the days of Schindler’s List or Star Wars and even worse than the three Taken films . Plus the supporting characters are not outstanding, so classifying The Marksman as an action film is not correct, and even more so a psychological-emotional film. However, when it premiered on January 15 in the US when there was no better film in theaters, The Marksman – better than luck – topped the box office chart with nearly 7 million USD in ticket sales after nearly 2 weeks in theaters.