Liam Neeson must keep driving or his family blows up.
Someone wants to kill Liam Neeson. Again.
Don’t get confused yet though. This latest release from the 71-year-old Northern Irish actor is kind of similar to but different than some of his past films.
In Retribution, Neeson plays Matt Turner, a Berlin-based financier whose day hasn’t started the way he’d planned. He’s got to take his kids, Emily (Lilly Aspell, Wonder Woman) and Zach (Jack Champion, Avatar: The Way of Water), to school. There is tension with his wife, Heather (Embeth Davidtz, Schindler’s List). They don’t get too far before the phone rings. An unknown caller informs him there are bombs under the seats of the car.
Retribution is directed by Nimród Antal, a Hungarian-American director, screenwriter and actor. He also worked with Matthew Modine (who plays Anders Muller in the film) on the set of Stranger Things.
(** At the time this is being written, we aren’t sure if Anders is the unknown caller or not.)
Retribution Trailer
Creating The Storylines
This is the third film Retribution producers Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman have made with Neeson. The first was 2014’s Non-Stop and then The Commuter in 2018. Both of these films were directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who is also a producer on Retribution.
Non-Stop starred both Neeson and Julianne Moore. Neeson plays a federal air marshal on a flight from New York to London. He has to find the killer on the plane who is offing people every 20 minutes until money demands are met. On a train, The Commuter has Neeson getting tangled up in a murderous conspiracy on the way from Tarrytown to Grand Central Station in NYC. It was filmed in London.
According to the film’s official press release, Rona and Heineman have found a “keen collaborator” in Neeson. Agreeing, Neeson points to their commitment to creating “good, old-fashioned entertainment and films that people want to see on the big screen.”
No Particular Set of Skills
Fans in the UK have taken particular note of the similarities in Neeson’s action-thriller catalog.
“Is it a Liam Neeson movie if his family is not in danger?” asked a fan in a Daily Mail article in June.
There are some slight differences between Taken, the three-part franchise that restarted Neeson’s career in 2008 and Retribution. However, a loose interpretation of both films points to Neeson playing a man who is trying to protect his family from bad hombres in different countries.
Could you be confusing the plot of Retribution with El Desconocido, the 2015 Spanish action-thriller where a bank executive gets an anonymous call that there’s a bomb in the car he’s in with his two kids.
Or maybe you think Retribution sounds a lot like 2018’s Steig. Nicht. Aus! (German: Don’t. Get. Out!), where Karl, a Berlin project developer is taking his kids, Josefine and Marius to school when, you guessed it, a stranger calls Karl about the bombs under the car seats unless a big ransom is paid.
Crazy, right? El Desconocido actually means “the unknown” in English but yes, Retribution and Don’t. Get. Out! are remakes.
Don’t let your brain work too hard on all of this. It could be the end of action-thriller flicks for Neeson. He recently told The Guardian back in May that he judges his future scripts by how many pages he gets through before thinking about making a cup of tea.
Clear your mind with Retribution and make your own judgement.
The film hits theaters on August 25.
