Theme: Fugitives

The Marksman (2021) – Liam Neeson

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.

Honest Thief (2020) – Liam Neeson

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.

High Rollers (2025) – John Travolta

This is a bit of a fun action movie, starring a 70-year-old John Travolta, with slight vibes of Mission Impossible. Although it gets off to a slow start, and gets a bit nasty in places, and is generally quite a simple movie, and has a long monotonous action scene towards the end; once it gets going it sustains an upbeat vibe and remains mildly captivating pretty much until the end scenes, which is rare for a movie so plain & simple as this one – especially one with a bit of a B-movie vibe about it. It’s actually quite an achievement and earns this movie a rating of slightly Below Average which makes it not much weaker than a lot of classics, which is quite an achievement considering some parts have a slight whiff of B-movie acting & cinematography, which is especially obvious towards the end, but does not make the movie a complete write-off – even the ending is slightly captivating, and the very ending is alright. It’s even tempting to rank this movie Bang Average on a par with many classics, but we have to consider its rewatchability which considering the minimal plot, simple script and intermittently weak acting & cinematography would make it quite hard to rewatch until it’s been pretty much totally forgotten again.

Travolta’s age is telling here – not so much in his face, but in the way he moves like a stiff & fragile stumbling old man.

Purely based on appearance, one of the supporting cast members called Caras, played by a guy who calls himself Swen Temmel, is almost certainly a real life son of John Travolta. Add to this how he looks nothing like his official father, but looks so much like Travolta he’s even been pictured doing impressions of him and the resemblance is striking.

The main woman on the protagonists’ team is a hacker called Link, played by Natali Yura, who is like a pound shop (or dollar store) Scarlett Johannson. Not as smart, classy or attractive but a similar flavour nevertheless.

Demián Castro does a solid job in playing Zade Black – the “target” and brother of the main antagonist. And the main antagonist – a man called Salazar, who has coerced the team of protagonists into helping him – is played quite adequately by Danny Pardo, although he doesn’t make as strong an impression and doesn’t get so much screen time as Castro.

All in all, I’d say this is a Netflix-grade movie, that’s blessed with a single elderly A-List star, and seems to have heavily supplemented its team of old-school industry dogsbodies with green new blood, such that it sits somewhere between Respectably Average and Hard To Watch.

Double Team (1997) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

This movie gets started with a cocktail of unpleasantries, from extreme queer exhibitionism to crying babies.

But it gets interesting shortly after 20 mins in, when Jean-Claude Van Damme gets essentially kidnapped by the agency he worked for, after disobeying a direct order. He’s held on a mysterious prison island and presented with the choice of keep working from a tight leash else be killed immediately. He manages to escape, and goes after the man who kidnapped his wife & child, with the help of his heavily pierced weird friend played by Dennis Rodman. Mickey Rourke plays the main antagonist in this movie. That’s all the significant characters already.

I rate it somewhere between So-So and OK, due to its balance of strengths and weaknesses. The last quarter an hour can get particularly boring for people who have seen this movie a few times before, even if not in the last few years.

Nowhere To Run (1993) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Nowhere To Run is a decent little movie, a bit slower than Van Damme’s best but still featuring some cool scenes, and is generally well poised – decent sound and camera work. The plot is a very simple one and the action is less frequent than some of Van Damme’s movies, but it’s still a respectable film for Van Damme fans to enjoy.

Van Damme is his usual cool self. Rosanna Arquette plays the lead female role quite convincingly. Kieran Culkin and Tiffany Taubman play the woman’s kids – mediocre performances by them, but kids are rarely good actors. Ted Levine and Joss Ackland are convincing as the main antagonists – the muscle and the brains respectively. Anthony Starke is pretty good in his very brief appearance near the start, as the guy who busts Van Damme out of jail. Edward Blatchford does alright as the bent sheriff who was courting the lead female until Van Damme arrived to provide a better option. Gene LeBell also appears for a minute, as the driver of a digger who tries to kill Van Damme.