We’re still living the wave of old man action movies launched by 2008’s Taken starring Liam Neeson, who enjoyed a set of fighting skills, then we saw him fight wolves in 2011’s The Gray, and the same year he faces a mysterious plot in Unknown.
From 2014 to 2022 he battled terrorism in Non Stop Plane, then took on a gang in “Running All Night”, solved a crime mystery in The Commuter, took on another gang in the snow in Cold Pursuit, faced off against corrupt FBI agents in “The Honorable Thief”, and then returned to Snow again in “The Road of Snow”, then another conspiracy in the government in “Blacklight”, and today in “Retribution” or “Retribution” he faces a madman who wants to kill him for money.
Old Nissen (71 years old) is sitting behind the wheel of his car, taking his teenage son and daughter to school, when he receives a call from a crazy terrorist telling him that he planted a bomb under his seat, and if he gets up, the bomb will explode. Is this a new idea? of course not.
The film mixes the ideas of Locke and Speed together on the one hand, and on the other hand it is a re/adaptation of a Spanish movie with the same title released in 2015. And of course Hollywood has a very long history of failures in making adaptations or Americanizing European productions. In other words, the Spanish film is much more beautiful than this modest film, which is a European-American co-production.
Matt Turner (Nissen), a senior American bank employee in the German capital, Berlin, lives with his wife, Heather (Embeth Davidtz), and her two teenage sons, Zack (Jack Champion) and Emily (Lily Aspel), and the latter, i.e. the teenage daughter, is the character inherent in the old action hero, whether it is Nissen. or others.
From the beginning, we see Matt being too busy with his work and not caring about his family, his wife begging him to take the two sons to school, and the two teens fighting from home to even getting into the car. Then one of those cheap phones that was hidden somewhere in the car rings.
Matt answers, and then a man speaks through a device that amplifies his voice to cover his tone. And we know that a bomb was planted under Matt’s seat, and with time we know that Matt is not the honest man, but rather he uses trick in his job to convince investors to put their money in projects that he knows are probably losing. But the caller is not an investor who has lost his money as in the original film, but rather a mad terrorist who wants a ransom.
Nissen has a good presence on the screen and this is the reason why he was chosen for the role without a doubt. As a star, he has more charisma than the Spanish actor Luis Tusar, and this is no less than the latter who gave a great performance in the original movie, but Nissen remains affiliated with Hollywood and he is the most famous in the world and the well-known face from Tokyo to Los Angeles. According to this rule, this movie is the biggest and it will be the most important whenever the masses want to see it, because they want the hero Nissen and not that face they don’t know.
But Nissen is caught in the equation of the American hero who ignores the police and takes charge to exact revenge on the villain, and she does not have credibility in the case of this character here. This is not an FBI agent, nor a security marshal, nor an intelligence officer. This is a financier or a financial expert. And no matter how much the masses want to watch their hero take revenge on the villain, this part destroys the entire movie because it was not executed wisely and elaborately.
The film does not delete anything from the original film, but rather inverts or reverses it. There is a girl older than her brother, and here a boy is older than his sister. There, the hero suspects a motorcyclist and collides with him. Here, he steps on his car’s brake pedal, and the bike collides with him from behind. There the girl has a boyfriend, here the boy has a girlfriend, and the boyfriend and girlfriend are motorcyclists. It is very strange and for which we do not find a logical explanation that the Hungarian-American director Nimrod Antal – (directed Vacancy, Armored and Predators) and the last movie is the most famous – is not proficient in executing action scenes and chases, despite his experience and credits with more action films than the Spanish film director Danny de la Torre, who Execute a breathtaking chase that ends with the hero’s car trapped between police patrols from behind and a helicopter from the front.
The motivations of the better humanized terrorist in the Spanish version are clearer and more convincing than the Nissen terrorists here. In fact, the Nissen terrorist only appears in two scenes, and often for this reason he is not convincing, and when he explains the reasons for his actions, the viewer does not care. Contrary to the terrorist of the original version, who we see from the middle of the movie to the end, he radiates anger and does not laugh sarcasticly as this idiot does here, who we do not want to mention who he is because Antal wanted him to be the surprise of the last scene.
The same problem with the character of the leader of the explosives disposal unit, Elvira Menges has a terrible charisma in the original movie that almost stole scenes from the movie’s hero. While here, Numa Dumezweni, a South African, does not breathe life into her personality as if it were a robot. One of the most beautiful scenes in the original film is the shot of the hero’s colleague’s car being blown up, because it has an element of surprise, while here we know exactly when it will explode, and even if the scene was perfect, its effect is weaker when it is devoid of the element of surprise.
Likewise, the end, and here we return to what we said in a previous paragraph: “If the hero is an ordinary man in the street and wants to take over, the director must implement the scene wisely and skillfully. ».
The end of the Spanish film is more convincing, exciting, breathtaking, and humanized to the extreme. While here, Nissen emerges from his predicament victoriously, as if he had gone through many crises before. This is the case with his previous characters in the films that we mentioned at the beginning of this topic.
Watch this movie if you’re a Liam Neeson fan and for no other reason, because you know you want to watch an American hero and not a story that respects your brain.
• “Watch this movie if you are a fan of Liam Neeson and not for any other reason, because you know that you want to watch an American hero and not a story that respects your mind.”
• No matter how much the masses want to see their hero take revenge on the villain, this part destroys the entire movie, because it was not executed wisely and elaborately.
• The end of the Spanish film is more convincing, exciting, breathtaking, and humanized to the extreme.
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