Playing the role of former marine Jim Hanson, Liam Neeson “sees pity” in the movie The Marksman (Vietnamese title The Marksman) currently showing in theaters in Vietnam.
Turning 69 years old, the burden of age is weighing heavily on the shoulders of “veteran” Liam Neeson. And in the movie The Marksman , that becomes even more evident. Previously, Honest Thief (2020) and Made in Italy (2019) were two films that signaled the retirement of the action movie star Taken , released in 2008.
Rancher Jim Hanson lives alone in southern Arizona, on the border with Mexico. By chance, he witnessed the escape of a Mexican mother and child who were being pursued by the smuggling mafia and had to cross the border to escape to the United States. In her dying breath, the mother asked him to take her young son to her family in Chicago and Jim was forced to keep his word because he was constantly tormented by the thought that because he stopped her, she was shot by the mafia, in exchange for him accepting the number. enough money to pay off the bank loan.
Liam Neeson and Joe Perez in the movie The Marksman
PHOTO: IMDB
The Marksman describes the escape journey of an old man and a young man from Arizona to Chicago city when the mafia, by paying bribes, easily crossed the border gate to destroy them. Unlike Taken where Liam Neeson plays the role of a father who “hunts” for his daughter’s kidnappers and puts them in a brothel, The Marksman turns him into prey. The movie starts off quite impressively with fast, suspenseful plot lines, but as it goes on, it gets more and more… boring.
Many details in the movie are installed carelessly, causing the film’s flow to lack logic. As a person who lived for many years near the US-Mexico border, Jim Hanson did not know even a single word of Spanish (Mexicans speak Spanish) to talk to little boy Miguel (Joe Perez). Or the initial bringing of Miguel 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 in one evening stopping on the side of the road while hiding. He ran while he knew his house had been burned to pieces by smugglers and his bank debt was still hanging in the balance. The American police in the movie either turn into people who specialize in taking bribes from smugglers and are willing to help them or are very naive about their skills in knowing that the Mexican mafia is infiltrating American soil and let them freely do whatever they want. Do whatever you want while chasing Jim Hanson and the boy.
Many of Liam Neeson’s slow action scenes are “saved” by sniper shots
PHOTO: IMDB
The content and details in The Marksman are too predictable, so director Robert Lorenz focuses on the action scenes. Unfortunately, this time it was even more absurd when old Jim Hanson fought a duel with a smuggler who was about 35-40 years younger and still won in the end even though the fights were quite slow and sluggish due to his age. The movie adds many of Jim’s sniper shots, causing the smugglers to be easily defeated even though Jim’s eyesight was blurred and Jim’s hands were shaking due to alcoholism. Partly because Robert Lorenz served as a producer in director Clint Eastwood’s sniper-themed film American Sniper (2014), which won an Oscar, the director focused on “tweaking” the sniper scenes to attract more attention. audiences. The camera angle of The Marksman is also not outstanding and the pace of the film is slow towards the end, making the audience… exhausted!
Liam Neeson’s performance in this movie is far from the time he played in Schindler’s List or Star Wars and is even inferior to all three Taken movies . In addition to the unremarkable supporting characters, classifying The Marksman as an action film is not correct, and even less so is the psychological-emotional film. However, when it premiered on January 15 in the US when theaters had no better movies, The Marksman – or not by luck – topped the sales chart when it reached nearly 7 million USD in ticket sales after nearly 2 weeks of release. theater.
