Acting careers cannot be charted or predicted; I’ve always thought that the best outcomes are a result of good choices and good luck in roughly equal measure. How the brooding Irish actor Liam Neeson wound up in globe-trotting action movies is one for the books…but that has become his specialty in the years since starring in Taken (2008). Fortunately, he has had ample opportunity to show us all that he has a robust sense of humor. But for now, it’s back to business. In Retribution he plays a successful but self-involved businessman who uses his wits—and sheer guts—to outsmart an unknown assailant who has planted a bomb in his car, which he drives around Berlin, with his two children trapped in the back seat.
If that premise seems laughable to you, stop reading now. If you aren’t willing to suspend your disbelief to that extent you’ll never make it through this well-paced yarn. The best adjective I can think of to describe this film is “efficient.” It gets the job done, much as one would expect.
My only disappointment is that its director, Nimród Antal, launched his career with a sensational sleeper called Control (2003) that I have never forgotten. I’m happy to know that he is gainfully employed (he even directed two episodes of Stranger Things last year) but I yearn to see something as original and provocative as his calling-card feature.