Moviegoer: Blacklight

Liam Neeson is almost as bored as the audience in this plodding thriller

By Diana Beechener

 Travis Block (Liam Neeson: The Ice Road) knows his way around difficult situations. A fixer for the FBI, Travis is sent in when undercover agents get in too deep. Sometimes he has to save them from angry criminals, other times, themselves.

When Travis is assigned to Dusty (Taylor John Smith: Shadow in the Cloud), it seems like a typical job. Dusty was assigned to a political rabble-rouser. He was meant to spy on her for the government, but he got too close. When she’s killed under mysterious circumstances, Dusty is convinced it’s the FBI’s fault. He wants to go to the press and gab.

         Travis thinks Dusty’s just buckling under the pressure of his job, but when government goons start chasing them, he reconsiders. As Travis begins to reevaluate what the government’s been doing, the government reevaluates how it feels about him. His daughter and granddaughter are threatened. A hit squad breaks into his apartment. Can Travis find a way out of his entanglement while keeping everyone alive?

         Oh boy.

         If Liam Neeson lowers the bar anymore for his cinematic endeavors, his next film will be called Limbo. This jumbled mess of lazy writing, bored acting, and questionable filmmaking choices can still technically be called a movie, but it is pretty bold to release this in theaters during a pandemic and expect viewers to pay to watch it.

Director Mark Williams (The Honest Thief) is clearly working on a budget, but still somehow finds time to throw obnoxious jump edits into the movie every time he wants to emphasize an action or a visual. The frame jumps, flashes white, and jumps again. It’s a headache-inducing technique that Michael Bay uses more effectively and sparingly.

         The other problem with the budget is the locale. Theoretically a film revolving around the misbehaviors of the FBI would be set in Washington, D.C. Yet, the bare streets and anemic action takes place in a void—even the museum that Neeson runs through lacks anything that could identify it as a Washington landmark. A few stock images show off the Washington Monument, but they’re few and far between. It’s pretty easy to tell that the film was shot in Australia—especially when you notice a few of the cars have steering wheels on the right side.

         A movie made on a tight budget might be forgiven if it had a story to tell. Sadly, Blacklight has about five stories to tell and fails to really explain any of them. The screenplay, partially written by former U.S. Justice Department Attorney Nick May (in his debut), doesn’t seem to have a grasp on undercover work, the FBI, the basic rules of newspaper reporting, or the principles of storytelling. Think of it as Tom Clancy novel with a concussion.

Neeson’s job is so poorly defined even he doesn’t seem to understand what he does. Listening to him mutter something about “being a fixer” and then hand waving away why he can never retire is painful. Most egregiously the movie just…ends. When we reach the plot’s 40-hour mark, the film just sort of stops, everything resolves in three minutes without any sort of real payoff. It’s as if the entire movie crew wandered off before the shoot could wrap.

         As for Neeson himself, it’s a bit of a mess. Granted, he’s not working with much here, but his lumbering action persona has been waning for a few years. In this movie he barely even bothers running away from the baddies, everything is a brisk walk or several cuts so his double can do the heavy lifting. Neeson is a great actor when given the chance, and hopefully he’ll remember that before he makes another one of these films.

         There’s an audience for this kind of movie. It’s the people who like to have films on in the background while they do chores. Blacklight is a lazy Sunday Netflix movie at best; please don’t pay box office premiums for this mess.

Poor Thriller * PG-13 * 108 mins.