Director: Nimrod Antal
Starring: Liam Neeson, Jack Champion, Lilly Aspell, Matthew Modine, Noma Dumezweni, Embeth Davidtz
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 91 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Sustained threat and coarse language

Berlin. A banker driving his children to school is threatened by a mysterious call that there’s a bomb in the car, and he’s commanded to sign away millions of euros.

Since 2008, Liam Neeson’s career has embraced action thrillers; at least one every year for 15 years (and more to come). His fans enjoy these thrillers and, while not necessarily the greatest of the genre, Neeson does have a strong screen presence and his writers and directors provide a variety of action situations. As does Hungarian-American director Antal, with Retribution.

This is a reasonable contribution to Neeson’s action repertoire. However, in checking out reviews and bloggers, it seems many anti-Neeson bloggers are masochists. They are prone to dislike the film. But they pay to go to the movie, sit through it, allegedly suffering because of how bad it is, then indulge themselves by often virulent online responses. This sledging phenomenon would be worth some serious study as to how of these non-fans tick.

But, back to Retribution. It is set in Berlin, with some fine vistas and locations. It opens with Matt (Neeson) preparing to go to work. There is some edge with his wife (Davidtz), and the couple have a lively agreeable young daughter (Aspell) and a surly teenage son (Champion). A banker, he is busy with business but has to drive the children to school. And, on the television, we have seen a car exploding at the Tiergarten.

The screenplay is written as if it all takes place in real time which also builds tension. Even though it is a Neeson action show, he spends practically the whole of the film sitting at the wheel of a car. And, well he might, because he receives a mysterious call from a disguised voice, threatening that there is a bomb under the car seats, ordering no one to leave the car, drive to various destinations (and another explosion killing a work colleague), a phone call to his wife, to retrieve a box from the bank, anxiety on the part of the children, his wife, and concern for the international police. He then faces an even greater crisis when the mysterious voice urges him to kill his partner at the bank, Anders Muller (Modine).

There are numerous vivid car chases around Berlin, the police closing in, his daughter seriously injured in her leg by flying shrapnel from the explosion.

Finally, Neeson goes into action to discover and confront the mysterious voice threatening him. For those who enjoy these basic action thrillers and are prepared to spend 90 minutes watching Neeson in another tense action-drama, why not Retribution?