{"id":8449,"date":"2024-11-18T21:51:47","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T02:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8449"},"modified":"2024-11-18T21:51:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T02:51:47","slug":"blacklight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/18\/blacklight\/","title":{"rendered":"Blacklight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blacklight<\/strong> (2022)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Briarcliff\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong violence, action, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Nick May and Mark Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Isham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Shelly Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 11, 2022 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Liam Neeson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Aidan Quinn, Claire van der Boom, Yael Stone, Andrew Shaw, Zac Lemons, Gabrielle Sengos, Tim Draxl, Georgia Flood, Caroline Brazier, Mel Jarnson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $9.5M (US)\/$15.9M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0At 69 (and closing in on 70), it looks like Liam Neeson is this era\u2019s answer to Charles Bronson. He may be up there in years, but he can still kick ass with the best of them thanks to the hard work of editors and fight choreographers. I always enjoyed Bronson\u2019s movies, especially the ones from his Cannon years. Looking back, even the bad ones- e.g. Murphy\u2019s Law, Assassination- were pretty good. I tried to keep that in mind as I watched Blacklight<\/strong>, the latest actioner to feature Liam as a tough guy with special skills that he\u2019ll gladly put to use against anybody foolish enough to cross him. It helped a little, but a bad movie is still a bad movie at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

\u00a0First of all, it should be noted that Blacklight<\/strong> is more like one of those paranoid thrillers from the 70s that a traditional action flick. You know, the ones where the hero becomes unhinged as he tries to prove the existence of a conspiracy. The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor are the first titles that come to mind. Liam plays that guy here. His character Travis Block is an off-the-books government operative working directly for FBI head Gabriel Robinson (Quinn, Legends of the Fall). His job is to save undercover agents from themselves when they get in too deep on a case. He\u2019s been at it for 20 years and it\u2019s taken its toll. He\u2019s seriously OCD and paranoid to the point where his daughter (Boom, The Square) doesn\u2019t trust him around his own granddaughter (Sengos). Would you trust a grandfather that gives a little kid a taser as a birthday present? Neither would I.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The movie opens at a political rally where a young, energetic, female Congressional candidate (obviously modeled after Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez) works the crowd like a pro. They love her ideas about how to fix the government. Not everybody shares her progressive views. Hours later, she\u2019s the victim of a fatal hit and run as she exits her Uber. It was staged, of course.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So where does Block fit in? He\u2019s sent to retrieve an agent, Dusty Crane (Smith, Sharp Objects), who appears to be losing it. He was somehow involved in the murder and feels guilty about it. Block is supposed to bring him in, that\u2019s it. Dusty has other ideas. Namely, he wants to spill his guts to on-line news reporter Mira Jones (Lampman, The Umbrella Academy) about a shady government op called \u201cOperation Unity\u201d. Naturally, he\u2019s taken out before he can talk.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before his untimely death, Dusty plants the seeds of doubt in Block\u2019s mind. Something sinister is going on and people need to know. Already on shaky ground psychologically speaking, Block really starts to unravel as he tries to get to the truth. He realizes he must be close when his family mysteriously vanishes without a trace. Could his longtime pal Robinson be behind it? What do you think? Three guesses and the first two don\u2019t count.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Block isn\u2019t the only one looking for answers. Mira, motivated in equal parts by altruism and career advancement, wants to get the story out there. Her editor (Draxl, A Place to Call Home) says she doesn\u2019t have enough. Block warns her of dire consequences if she persists in her efforts. Like all good movie journalists, giving up is not in her nature.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Mark Williams (Honest Thief), Blacklight <\/strong>is rather short on action and long on scenes of Liam running around in an agitated state. That\u2019s not to say Blacklight<\/strong> has no action. It does. It gives us the usual shoot-outs and car chases, but they\u2019re perfunctory. There\u2019s much movement, but very little life. When he\u2019s not trying to preserve democracy, Block tries to fix things with his daughter so he can spend time with his only grandchild. Ironically, it\u2019s the one thing the \u201cfixer\u201d can\u2019t fix easily.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Liam can play this sort of role in his sleep and seems to do just that in Blacklight<\/strong>. Sure, he has a few more mental health issues than the average action hero, but Travis Block isn\u2019t too different from Bryan Mills, the beleaguered ex-CIA agent from the Taken movies. Quinn\u2019s a decent actor, but his villainous character here is utterly forgettable. Smith is the living embodiment of a Ken doll, handsome but plastic through and through. Lampman is okay as the young journalist, but the screenplay does her a great disservice by never putting her in direct danger. Where\u2019s the scene of the gun-toting government goons going after her?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t point out this great big plot hole. Well, maybe not so great big, but it\u2019s big. We never get an adequate explanation as to why Robinson wanted the politician dead. He makes speeches about J. Edgar Hoover and preserving the American way, but his end game remains vague. Did he see the politician as a threat to America? It\u2019s a pretty big screw-up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t say Blacklight<\/strong> is terrible, but it\u2019s a long way from good. Calling it okay feels like a bit of a stretch, but I\u2019ll go with it. It\u2019s watchable, but only barely. Look at it this way, Liam\u2019s fans will probably still be watching it 30 years from now much like Charles Bronson\u2019s fans with his lesser titles. Is that such a bad thing?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blacklight (2022)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Briarcliff\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong violence, action, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Nick May and Mark Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Isham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Shelly Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 11, 2022 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Liam Neeson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Aidan Quinn, Claire van der Boom, Yael Stone, Andrew Shaw, Zac Lemons, Gabrielle Sengos, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Blacklight-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8666,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8449\/revisions\/8666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}