This movie sees classic Neeson in his element, albeit tamed down a bit due to his old age. The story is mildly intriguing. There’s some action, and a simple concept but just enough script to keep things mildly interesting.
Overall I rate this movie Below Average, but you may rate it higher if you’re especially in the mood for this genre and haven’t seen this one before. Especially if you’re a fan of the theme: travel, mountains, Everest, survival, improv, kidnap, manhunting, escape & evasion, bus driving, etc.
The first few minutes are boring. The next few minutes are depressing – even hard to watch. By the 15th minute, we meet the family that includes the boy who will become the co-star of the show, but it’s still quite miserable and hard to watch thus far.
The interesting stuff begins around half an hour in, when the boy whose life he saved, who lost his mother in a firefight at the border, seems to have been pursued by the cartel members from the border, and Liam Neeson‘s character changes his mind and decides to rescue the boy even though it would be easy to dismiss the situation and say he’s probably safe in the hands of the border force.
It gets a bit more interesting near the end of the first hour, as the police pull him over on the highway and it turns out the copper was paid off by the cartel. But Neeson susses it and escapes, and now he knows how real the situation is, and decides to take the fight to them.
That’s pretty much the movie in a nutshell – there’s a few action scenes but aside from that it’s generally quite slow, boring and a bit depressing.
As such, I rate it So-So, and that’s probably being kind. A couple levels down from Bang Average. One level better than Watchable, although I could also justify rating it just Watchable. The rare good bits, combined with the slightly compelling story and the respectable acting & cinematography save it from the dustbin even though it’s got a terribly simple script and is quite boring and depressing for the most part, especially if you’ve seen it before and recall some of the storyline.
This movie starts out slow and boring, but not impossible to watch since it’s clearly just warming up to something via a tedious, inefficient backstory. 10 minutes in, things clearly indeed appear to be warming up, as Liam Neeson‘s character Tom rings the police to confess to being a famous uncaught bank robber.
Half an hour in is when the action really kicks in though, as the FBI agents sent to investigate his confession find the money, then attempt to kill Neeson, then get surprised by their own boss and kill him while Neeson gets away in a bullet-showered car chase.
By 45 minutes in, Tom decides to attempt to clear his name before handing himself in, and by 60 minutes in, his girlfriend Annie (played by Kate Walsh) has been almost killed, and he goes on the attack against the two rogue agents.
The rogue agents themselves are played by Jai Courtney (from Divergent) and Anthony Ramos (from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts). Ramos’s character here has a conscience but is constantly led astray but his more psychopathic friend played Courtney, who by 70 minutes in (with 30 minutes to go) is pretty much a lone ranger, having alienated his partner in crime, his new boss, and of course Tom & Annie.
The old boss of the two rogue agents, who they soon killed, was played by Robert Patrick (the liquid metal antagonist called T-1000, from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991). The new boss of these two agents, who gets tipped off by Tom, is played by Jeffrey Donovan with vibes like a cross between Clint Eastward, Jesse Enkamp and Magnus Carlsen.
A slightly clever ending somewhat saves this movie, solidifying its rating as better than merely Watchable. Indeed, I rate it So-So.
This movie starts out slow, cold and depressing, and never very much escapes from this vibe. It sees a beta male character played by Liam Neeson, called Nels Coxman, gradually turning into a semi alpha male character, not dissimilar from Liam Neeson’s action movie from the year prior (The Commuter, 2018).
Cold Pursuit sets a slow pace, but thanks to decent screenplay, it kind of manages to hold attention still. It’s not the most entertaining movie Liam Neeson’s been involved in – not even close – but it’s probably not his worst work either.
In the first 22 minutes, Nels’ son has died, ruled an overdose, and Nels is on the verge of suicide himself now, until he discoveres his son was really murdered, so he goes after and kills someone involved while attempting to track down the root of the drug empire that’s to blame.
The main antagonist, Trevor ‘Viking’ Calcote, played by Tom Bateman, looks like a son of Quentin Tarantino, and quite appropriately, he plays a vice-pushing ringleader who is also particularly well informed about certain other habits deceiving the masses.
Also with the suspected Tarantino link, it should come as no surprise that this movie shows a lot of blood & gore – depicting violence in some very slow, very ugly scenes – seriously polluting the minds of the audience.
By 40 minutes in, Neeson’s character Nels has killed multiple people in separate scenes by punching them to near death before shooting them to finish them off, then dumped their bodies at a deserted snowy waterfall.
It gets a little more lighthearted and yet intriguing towards the end of the first hour, when Nels hires a hitman to take out Viking – the cartel boss behind his son’s murder – then the hitman double crosses Nels, doing a deal with Viking, then the hitman gets hit, and Viking goes after who he thinks hired him.
Pace is still slow due to low-tempo screenplay and solumn sound effects etc, but there’s a bit less grit and a bit more intrigue now.
Watch out for explicit man-on-man kissing at the start of the second hour – it’s not for everyone!
This movie had a bit more solid action towards the end, but never very much escapes the slow, gritty, irreverent atmosphere that it established early on. Bateman’s acting is strong and Neeson’s is decent too, but given the constant cold moody genre, I can’t rate it any better than So-So.
This movie kicks off with some terribly tedius non-plot quasi drama scenes that attempt to build backstory but are executed in a seeminly intentionally messy muddled way.
Within 10 minutes, things start to get real, as Liam Neeson‘s NPC type character gets a rude awakening in the form of an unexpected termination from work. But the movie goes straight back to muddled drama mode.
20 minutes in, it starts to get interesting, as Neeson’s character meets a strange woman who sets him a challenge with a large cash prize, and the core concept of this movie begins to reveals itself.
Around half way in, Neeson’s character gets framed for the murder of an FBI agent, all the while staying on a commuter train where he’s been for most of the movie already. At this point, this movie looks set to be rated Watchable – no more, since the first half has been so boring with such little going on. Sure, there’s a vibe of mystery among the semi-helpless angst but that’s literally the entire movie thus far summed up already, so it’s not a great fit for an action hero movie fan but not completely off the mark either.
Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t get any better until the last half hour. The angty stress & tension takes a long time to subside. It turns into a bit of a horror train ride in the secod half, and takes forever to let up. It’s a very one dimensional movie in this respect, and falls short of the ideal vibe us action hero movie connoisseurs are most interested in. But it’s not completely off the mark – Neeson still plays a bit of an adept hero – kind of. He especially comes into his own in the last half an hour, when he takes the lead and starts telling everyone on the crashed train what to do, to help them survive. From that moment on, he gets more dominant as the movie goes on, until in the closing scene he’s full re-instated as a cop and re-finds the woman behind the phonecalls.
In the end, I rate it So-So. A couple levels down from Bang Average, and just a few levels up from utterly Unwatchable. But this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it at all – it’s still a level above Watchable.
This movie begins with Liam Neeson‘s character acting rather stressed and dazed in an airport, ignoring random people who speak to him, and looking at everyone suspiciously, especially a man dressed like a traditional muslim. Within 5 minutes you can probably guess where this movie is going, and why it’s been commissioned – to make everyone look at everyone suspiciously in public places, especially airports and train stations etc – and especially muslims. And the speech by the actual hijacker in the last 15 minutes is really pushing this narrative hard, so much that if you’ve ever seen this movie before, you might be tempted to switch off at that point in order to skip that nonsense while knowing you’re not missing anything special in the ending. Anyway, there’s nothing new about Neeson pansying to this kind of agenda, so let’s get back to seeing how the movie goes down.
In the 11th hour, ahem, the 11th minute, things finally start to get the slightest bit interesting, as Neeson’s character texts a message to someone saying “we are go” when the plane’s about to go. This tells us he’s probably doing some kind of job on that plane, but we still don’t know quite what it is.
In the 15th minute we see he is indeed an air marshall, or at least, he has the gun and badge of one while on the plane. Then one minute later, someone starts texting him, to mess with him, and the movie really kicks in, as the anonymous texter threatens to kill someone every 20 minutes until 150 million dollars is paid into his account.
The movie proceeds into a session of scrutinising all the passengers, trying to figure out who is the killer. In the real world, of course, bank accounts get frozen very easily, so this whole “wire me the ransom money” concept that’s so common in movies like this, is utter nonsense.
This one a very gritty, suspenseful action mystery movie with an extremely simple yet still confusing plot until the last 15 minuts. I have to rate it Below Average, and even that’s complimentary considering the BS it’s pushing. First time viewers may rate it more highly, but when you remember the vague outline of the story, there’s not much left to rewatch it for, until several years later by which time you’ve mostly forgotten how it goes and can kind of enjoy it again until it get ridiculous near the end in which case you might want to switch off early.
This movie is allegedly based on the Hasbro game called Battleship although it doesn’t seem overly affected by this.
The first half an hour is dedicated to building the backstory, although it doesn’t go far into the past – it’s all fairly recent history. This part of the movie has a bit of mild action and a bit of lighthearted drama – nothing too serious, and mildly entertaining. It’s pushing the miliary angle quite hard, but aside from that, it’s not a bad start to the movie – decent actors, decent cinematography, decent props, decent budget, etc.
Liam Neeson plays a US Navy admiral, and Rihanna plays a petty officer – they’re both strong supporting cast members but neither of them are the main character in this movie. The true star of this movie is Taylor Kitsch (with vibes like a cross between Chris Pine, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen) who plays Lieutenant Alex Hopper – a troublesome young Navy officer whose higher ranking brother, Commander Stone Hopper, convinced him to join the Navy for discipline purposes, but it didn’t quite work out. He’s about to be kicked out of the Navy pretty soon, but then something happens which changes everything.
On the first half an hour mark, things really kick in, and this movie becomes quite exciting, as alien ships find their way to Earth, and the whole thing is depicted with a good level of realism – well grounded yet with good cinematics, without skimping on budget. It’s actually quite creative and smart in its depictions of alien technology, and the visual special effects are pretty strong. The music and sound effects are strong too. Hollywood went all out with this one, in a conservative way. They seem to have been playing with a non extravagant budget and succeeding in being emotive without being soppy or projecting beta-male vibes, thus appealling very well to kind of people they’re probably trying to win over – to recruit into the military or at least think positively of it.
There’s also a good level of mystery sustained for some time from this moment on. 20 minutes later, Alex Hopper becomes the highest ranking officer in charge of the last remaining destroyer in a weird twist of fate since he was on the verge of being kicked out of the Navy – now all eyes and pressure are on him.
On the 1 hour mark, we meet these alien creatures up close & personal for the first time – not just their spaceships or communications or weapons technology, but we see the face of one of them. Hopper gets touched on the forehead by one, and their minds exchange thoughts for a few seconds. Then their friends come and extract the captured injured alien, but Hopper already knows their intention to take over the world, which gives him a new lease of life to prevent it.
Some of the best moments include when they take out an alien ship by shining sunlight in their eyes; when the last destroyer sinks and they man an old battleship with the help of some old veterans; when they sail that battleship with fancy manoeuvres to trick the aliens before taking out their mothership; and when the friendly jets appear at the end to save them from dying, since they’ve already managed to take out the mothership controlling the forcefield. Although it’s an incredibly one dimensional concept – very minimal in terms of plot – this movie still succeeds in entertaining very well, pretty much from start to finish, at least for those who haven’t seen it before recently enough to remember roughly how it goes. It does of course offer very little for rewatchers who can’t wait long enough to forget the key features of the simple storyline.
With all this in mind, I’m going to rate this a Decent movie – just one level down from the likes of Thor which has a more elaborate plot. This puts it on a par with the best James Bond movie ever made – The Living Daylights – from an action hero movie junkie’s perspective. Because I can’t think of a more powerful Navy oriented action hero movie in modern times. But I caution against rewatching it too soon because the appeal will be massively reduced that way, due to the extremely one-dimensional plot.
This movie is a bit depressing to begin with. In the first half an hour, Liam Neeson‘s character, Dr Martin Harris, gets ruined by a car accident that all coincides with an elaborate scheme to steal his identity that even his wife plays along with, and this situation somehow manages to gaslight him into admitting that he’s not really who he says & knows he is, after only a few minutes of argument – or so it seems, until we see it was just an excuse to avoid arrest. But then by 35 minutes in, he seems truly gaslighted – even calling himself insane and asking a doctor for help, who only gaslights him further and drugs him up, which is sad to see but is an accurate reflection of how such a person is likely to be dealt with by such an other person in the real world.
Some folks might think this movie were commissioned to scare people into getting maximum IDs & verifications, in theory for their own protection, but in fact making them most easily scrutinised & controlled. The caving in to gaslighting, and the medical preprogramming, probably appeal to the same sponsors too; as does the GMO promotion at the very end, which I would say is quantity-minded and quality-ignorant on top of short-sighted – but that’s just a bluff – these folks know what they’re doing and it’s quite nefarious.
Fortunately, the real action picks up by 40 minutes in – if it didn’t get going soon, this movie wouldn’t appeal much to action movie fans like those who enjoyed Neeson’s performance in Taken (2008). Bearing in mind this movie was made prior to Taken 2 (2012).
In the end, Unknown (2011) paints a powerful but depressing story. It has some good acting, some good action and some good plot substance, but is still a bit thin on all these fronts, and it’s a bit heavy on dispiriting drama and the BS pushing, so for conscious connoisseurs of slick action hero movies, I have to rate this one Below Average at best. About equal to Taken 2 which was released just 1 year after this one and was pushing a similar amount of BS but of a different sort.
Diane Kruger does a decent job in the main supporting role here – as a woman called Gina who drove the taxi that crashed, then saved Dr Harris’s life, then when he found her again, she helped him some more, and they became quite close. She’s not a bad actress here – she helped make the movie what it is. Several other decent actors contributed too, but didn’t get so much screen time.
There’s an interesting plot twist half an hour before the end, which explains where Dr Harris’s combat skills come from, but it’s not until the final few minutes of the movie when he gets more of his memory back, that he really becomes an omnipotent fighting machine reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s performance in Taken.
If you think Taken 2 was being unorthodox by having Liam Neeson‘s hotshot character Bryan Mills among those kidnapped, you’ll probably think Taken 3’s a bit out there too, since it sees his wife killed in the first 20 minutes and Bryan becomes the prime suspect but doesn’t stick around to get arrested even in his own country, in his own house – instead he decides to go on the run and get to the bottom of things in his own way.
This movie benefits massively from the presence of Forest Whitaker who plays the lead investigator on the case of Bryan’s ex wife’s murder – you may recogise him as an FBI agent from Bloodsport several decades ago. He’s a pretty good actor, on a similar level to Neeson I’d say, even if nowhere near as rich or famous, he has just as much screen charisma.
Inline with what we’ve come to expect from the first two Taken movies, this one continues the theme of realistic insights into tactics that such a person as Neeson’s character Bryan would be likely to use, including some things more cliché and other things that we’d be less likely to consider. Such as inconspicuous code words over telephone calls (cliché but tactically powerful), and escaping from a foot chase by going through unexpected underground tunnel systems that have inconspicuous entrance masking objects (kind of like hiding in plain sight, thus still a bit cliché, while equally powerful). Also escaping from handcuffs using a concealed pick – something like what I thought we would see in the last movie to be honest, and then he pulled out a mini mobile phone instead! He also does a bit of waterboarding – a torture & interrogation technique made popular by American military in Gitmo etc.
As with the last movie, the hand-to-hand combat scenes here are very choppy between different camera angles – a classic method of masking an actor’s lack of real combative acumen, and in this case, his total lack of physical coordination altogether.
This movie also has a vibe of mystery that wasn’t present in the first two Taken movies, such that it’s not until half an hour before the end that we ever find out who killed Bryan’s ex wife – or so we think – and it’s not until the last quarter an hour that someone (his daughter) actually gets “Taken” this time round.
Even though this movie deviates from the standard Taken concept, and takes a while to warm up, and is a bit miserable early on; in the end I have to rate it higher than Taken 2, and roughly on a par with the original thanks to its strong ending. The highest point was near the end, when Bryan was speeding in a Porsche, chasing after the plane that his ex wife’s murderer turned daughter’s kidnapper was trying to escape in. But it wasn’t just an isolated high, it was part of a larger ending that’s generally quite strong thanks to the converging contributions of multiple decent actors and the richness & pace of the script – something gravely lacking earlier on.
I was disappointed (but not surprised) by the closing scene though. When, after learning that his daughter is pregnant, Bryan says something along the lines of “whatever you decide, I’ll support you” as if there’s a decision to be made (to kill or not to kill, is what I assume it means). But they cleverly brushed that one under the carpet quickly, by talking about the potential name of the baby, as if that’s what Bryan were referring to all along.
This movie takes half an hour to get warmed up, after a bit too long with the non-action backstory drama. But once it gets going about half an hour in, it turns roughly into what we know and expect from the first Taken movie. But even with all that backstory building, it’s really much ado about nothing early on, because this movie’s backstory is still quite reliant on knowing how the first movie went down.
Seeing Liam Neeson run around town, away from those who intend to kidnap him and his family members, really highlights the kind of fragile, awkward movement that only the trained eye could clock onto in the first movie. The fight scenes are also a bit weaker this time round, with a lot of camera angle flashing – a serious lack of rolling footage that lasts more than a fraction of a second – this is a classic budget coverup tactic for actors who can’t really fight, but the last movie didn’t have so much of this going on – not because Neeson could fight any better, but because it must have had a better screen combat team, including choreographers assisting him and stunt doubles standing in for him etc. I guess they’ve cut the budget in that department for Taken 2.
On the plus side, there’s realistic tactics displayed again by Neeson’s character Bryan Mills here, including things we didn’t see in the last movie. Such as memorising a journey taken when kidnapped, by counting seconds while listening out for sounds and driving style changes all along the way, even while blindfolded, in order to re-trace the same route later on; and using items concealed in clothing, to facilitate escape (in this case, a mini cellphone). Then measuring distance while on the phone by counting seconds between an explosion on each end.
On the plus side also, Maggie Grace‘s acting has improved slighty since the last movie. Not massively so, but it’s a little bit better than it was before. Just a little bit.
Around an hour in, things really warm up, as Bryan instructs his daughter Kim on how to help him and her mother to escape. There’s a good 10 minutes of fast action from here – mainly a high speed car chase where Kim is in the driving seat. This, combined with her helping him to escape earlier on, makes this movie very much about the daughter playing the action hero while the father himself is a somewhat immasculated man – a theme we saw from the very beginning while he’s meekly trying to win over his ex wife, who he treats like royalty, even though she’s been with another man for some time. All this girl power and immasculation stuff probably ticks a few boxes for the producers, but makes for a much weaker action movie – it’s much less enjoyable – it’s much weaker in its highs, and it’s much stronger in its lulls – it’s got less pleasantry, and more unpleasantry, which is no mean feat considering the nature of the last movie. It’s not until the last 20 minutes (15 if you take out the closing credits) when Bryan really does his thing and tries to rescue his ex wife.
All in all, it’s not massively different from the first Taken movie, and it has some slightly fresh ideas of its own, but it’s clearly a weaker movie over all, while still being mildly entertaining enough and on-genre enough to earn a Below Average rating I’d say. And that may even be a bit generous considering all the hard-to-watch monotonous and unpleasant chunks that I found myself fast-forwarding through in the knowledge that I was missing absolutely nothing from the goodness of the movie and even saving myself the pain of the screeching background noise that I can only assume is a desperate attempt to add flesh on the bones of the movie and build some kind of suspense & momentum when in fact it really serves only to irritate, not dissimilar to annoying noisy adverts jumping out and disturbing your mood while trying to enjoy a decent YouTube video for example (I’m sure that’s done as a psychological warfare tactic, and not really for the ad revenue).
Bryan’s ex wife in this movie and the last, called Lenore Mills, is played adequately by Famke Janssen who you may recognise as Jean Grey aka Phoenix from the X-Men movie series prior to Sophie Turner taking over that role for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
The main baddie in this movie – the father of the main baddie in the previous movie – is played by Rade Šerbedžija (from Tekken 2). He’s not a bad actor but he seems to have a habit of appearing in slightly flopped sequels with similar names. Watch out for him if you want to make a movie called anything like Token 2 or Toucan 2!
This movie begins with a very realistic view of some of the troubles in today’s world, as it builds up the backstory before getting stuck into the meat & potatoes of the plot. Liam Neeson‘s acting is pretty good here, but the woman playing his daughter has a serious lack of acting ability – her emotional scenes are cringeworthy in how they’re so skin-deep and bone dry, although to her credit she does get into the role properly once or twice, for the most important scenes, such as the moment of her kidnap. She’s also built so butch she couldn’t possibly be Neeson’s daughter – they don’t look alike and they don’t think alike, and this only magnifies the issue of poor acting, but fortunately she won’t be doing much in this movie beyond her role in the beggining and even less in the end, so this isn’t a major issue once it gets going.
The kidnap scene happens shortly before the end of the first hour, and aside from this being a rare moment of good acting from the daughter of Neeson’s character, it’s also the first time Neeson shows his talent as a “preventer” which lays the groundwork nicely for whats to come and makes the movie quite exciting going forwards, with about one hour remaining. This particular kidnap scene is well directed, well scripted, well planned and well supported with good cinematography and good acting – it only lasts a few minutes but it’s easily the most memorable and powerful moment of the movie, and as such, quite appropriately it makes clever use of the word Taken which is where this movie gets its name from – in fact a trilogy of movies (Taken in 2008; Taken 2 in 2012; Taken 3 in 2014).
Aside from strong combative tactics & techniques empty hands, blades, guns and makeshift weaponary too (massive credit to the fight choreographers there), some of the other niche problems & solutions demonstrated by Neeson in this movie are pretty realistic too, on topics such as rush-job crimescene analysis, suspect tracking, ad-hoc interrogation, room-clearing counter-measures and stunt driving, which all adds to the credible impression of his character and makes for a better movie in general. He’s basically an ex paramilitary operator with very tidy hands-on skills plus connections that enable him to get any kind of info he needs from government. He doesn’t move like an athlete, he’s even a bit physically feeble in his movement, which is a big red flag to the trained eye, considering his alleged top-level hands-on military background; but considering his age, his variety of skills, and his extremely useful connections, his obvious physical flaws do actually match a different kind of agent that makes his character credible again, ie someone privileged in an agency like the CIA where he’d have access to all the best training and connections without really needing to train so hard physically as someone coming through the military system would. Now if we go with this concept just to make the acting credible, the main thing that doesn’t add up now is how he’s so broke – he ought to be well set. Retiring completely from any kind of well-earning work just to be closer to his daughter who he’s still very distant with, doesn’t really add up, especially if we go with the privileged agent narrative. If he were ever operating on that level, he would have earnt plenty before he retired; else with all those connections on top of the kind of drive displayed in this movie, he should be easily capable finding work that closely suits his lifestyle preferences and still pays quite well – especially something senior in the security industry. Enough to buy a last-minute plane ticket at least. With all that specialist training and such a conservative approach to parenting, one would expect him to have saved up and cached away some resources for a rainy day, if only to help in case of emergency – exactly this very kind of emergency for example, which he was already predicting and trying to prevent before it happened. So some things just don’t add up here, but it’s not so bad that it significantly detracts from the power of the movie – it’s mainly just something that comes to mind when stopping to think critically about the credibility of the lead character’s story. On the surface, things generally seem quite realistic (except for the daughter’s awful acting early on).
At the half-way mark, when he gets close to the trail of his daughter and finds someone who she befriended and gave her jacket to, this movie looks potentially set for a rating of Above Average if it continues on its current trajectory which has had plenty of slow & dry patches but some impressive occasional highs too and seems to be still building momentum and just starting to get into the thick of the plot. Unfortunately the highs are a bit less impressive in the second half – the creativity doesn’t dry up entirely, and the action scenes are stll respectably made, but the momentum dwindles slightly and this becomes a Bang Average movie in the end.
Batman Begins (2005) is a star-studded action-drama thriller starring Christian Bale (of Equilibrium, 2002) as Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne’s growth from childhood into adulthood, we see how he became the Batman, who he formed his initial friendships & alliances with, who he became early enemies with, and we follow his first few missions as the Batman.
Also starring Liam Neeson as the Ninja clan leader who helped train Batman near the start of the movie, while harbouring a dark intentions that come back into the plot towards the end of the movie.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play the roles of Batman’s senior helpers – Alfred the butler, and Mr Fox the technologist who was a former board member and friend of Bruce Wayne’s late father.
Gary Oldman (from Léon and The Book Of Eli) plays the detective who Batman forms an early alliance with, and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise) plays the lead female who Bruce Wayne grew up with and Batman rescues.
Tom Wilkinson plays the main bad guy early on, and Cillian Murphy plays the main baddie in the middle of the movie.
Generally, it’s a great cast with great acting ability expressed throughout the movie. Batman’s car and technological gadgets are also very nice.
But it’s disappointing that we get some annoyingly hard-to-see fight scenes where everything’s dark and the camera keeps switching between pieces of unclear footage – this is not the kind of action scene I enjoy to watch, but I appreciate there’s no real martial arts skill to be demonstrated by any of these guys and this is a way to cover it up and make it still look credible for drama lovers and suspense or even horror genre fans. Indeed, this movie gets a bit boring with a lot of drama genre creeping in, but when the plot gains legs and the action picks up it becomes very entertaining from time to time.
There’s a great plot twist about half an hour before the end of the movie, when Liam Neeson’s character comes to Gotham.
All in all, I rate it pretty good for fans of this kind of mixed action-drama genre; but for pure action hero movie awesomeness, I rate this movie just ‘OK’ on a par with golden oldie action dramas like Lethal Weapon that have minimal special effects and gadgets etc.
Sequels
If you loved this movie, you might also love its immediate sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which brings back most of the same major cast members and gets regularly called a masterpiece by movie critics, although it doesn’t work so well for me – the star of that movie is actually the Joker rather than the Batman. Maybe it’s good for drama and horror movie fans, but it’s not so pleasant for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs to enjoy. But if you do enjoy the sequel, you’ll be pleased to know most of the same guys come back again for a threequel, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Action Hero Movies
