To say that “Blacklight” is one of the shonkiest and dopiest movies that I’ve ever endured would imply that this utterly bizarre excuse for a feature even deserves to see daylight from the straight to DVD bargain bin where it belongs.
Unfortunately, the Liam Neeson geri-action genre is on its last legs. Director and co-writer Mark Williams (who recently helmed “Honest Thief”) and co-writer Nick May have donned the Hawaiian shirts of Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman and taken the lifeless remains of Neeson’s acting corpse for a spin “Weekend at Bernie’s” style.
Now, the premise for “Blacklight” sounds interesting. The appropriately named Travis Block (Neeson) is an off the books FBI operative, sent in when undercover operatives transgress. So far, so good. When his latest assignment draws him into a conspiracy involving a political assassination, Block is forced to test allegiances with his friend and shot-caller FBI director (Aidan Quinn looking like an “A-Team” George Peppard). And then here’s the rub, the performances, the dialogue, the telegraphed mystery and the empty quality of the production – cannot resuscitate this idea.
Williams’ formal work in “Blacklight” asks how much of this movie can omit the lead of this broadly categorised “action” movie? For example, we never see Neeson behind the wheel in the opening muscle car ride through to liberate an undercover operative. In a car stunt the dark tinted windows deny the audience any sense of stakes. Stunt performers are both elevated and anonymous. The times we see the performers, a variety of trained killers, demonstrating tradecraft, they can’t hit close-range targets.
“Blacklight” is shot in Australia (partially in Melbourne and Canberra), standing in for an American city close to Washington D.C. The substitution, perhaps compounded by the fact that the scenes were shot at the height of COVID lockdowns, makes the entire film feel like a U.S city has been body-snatched by aliens and synthetically recreated on another planet. The production design is in the black hole above the high school play and Steven Seagal production.
Writers May and Williams, who wrote the screenplay from a story by May and Brandon Reavis, create a lumbering, infuriating vomit of thriller archetypes that consistently play the audience for simpletons. The revelations demonstrate that bad news editors can reduce salacious and deeply important stories of Government malfeasance to clickbait (Tim Draxl’s Drew Hawthorne is Alex Jones’ idea of traditional media editorial).
Likewise, the American intelligence community may be more interested in holding on to power than serving the people (Aidan Quinn’s Gabriel Robinson only needed a wax moustache and fluffy white cat to ram the message home). In a post “All The President’s Men”, “JFK”, and Trump world the characters feel like they’re living in an a historical vacuum.
The supporting cast is essentially a litany of cardboard cutouts. There’s not a memorable line, performance, opportunity for their talents to be showcased. The emotional trajectory of the story refuses to allow the characters to register the fallout from a series of murders, death threats and illegal hits.
Emmy Raver-Lampman’s reporter Mira Jones is so happy with the website traffic to her story that she neglects to account for the fact that it accounts for the murder of an AOC style politician by rogue intelligence forces.
The saving grace in the dunderheaded exercise is several fleeting examples where Neeson’s age registers. The calling card of his latter purple patch of action thrillers (especially in “Taken” and “The Grey”) is that despite losing a step, Neeson was able to dish out punishment. “Taken” was a full fourteen years ago: now we want to see a more canny fixer, brains prioritised above braun. Neeson’s Block is unfortunately cursed with a personal life quandary of paranoia and a flawed affectation of obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
“Blacklight” is so bad that it had me pondering why the film never features the use of a black light. “Blacklight” could have been a silver-haired marriage of Charles Bronson’s “The Mechanic” and George Clooney’s “Michael Clayton”: instead, it’s expressionless, thin ply toilet paper.
