Retribution Review

I imagine Liam Neeson read the script to "Retribution," his latest "geezer pleaser," saw he sits in a Mercedes Benz for almost the entire thing and thought "wow this is gonna be an easy paycheck." But it's only because he's bound by touchscreen and chrome door handles that he actually gets an opportunity to do some real acting.

Not that the end-product is Shakespeare, it's just a brief thriller, but Liam gives his character Matt Turner such dimension that you're wondering if he thought it might be. At first coming off as a workaholic, and frankly deadbeat, husband and father, and there is a weariness so barely underneath that by the time he gets the phone call telling him there's a bomb in his car (the same car his kids are in), his face and voice somehow expressed rage and worry ontop of the exhaustion. He remains consistently the best thing about his movies, and for fans, "Retribution" has the goods.

Too bad the rest is old hat; the explosive has a pressure trigger, meaning that if he leaves his supple leather seat, kaboom. Or in cinema terms, it's a riff on "Speed," a superior film because of one critical failing here: the villain. Their identity is supposed to be a surprise (speaking to Matt via a voice-changer), robbing us of a juicy character actor to really engage the audience. By the time the big reveal comes, not only is it obvious, but also it is a character actor who clearly is eager to sink their teeth into. It's such a shame it comes far too late in the otherwise breezy runtime.

I won't lie though: it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense; at one point the mysterious person on the phone warns Matt "not" to stop the vehicle, but wouldn't you know, what felt like ten minutes later and the car is parked! The bad guy's demands, or rather their motivation, is also hidden until almost the halfway point, so you spend time guessing only for it to not matter.

But whatever: "Retribution" is another high-concept Liam Nesson film ("the one where Liam Neeson drives a car with a bomb"), so much so that eventually Hollywood is gonna run out of families for him to need to avenge.

Heart of Stone Review

Hollywood wants so badly to make Gal Gadot a star that they're tossing her into movies before the script is finished: case in point Netflix's "Heart of Stone," a perfectly serviceable spy thriller that has all the action beats but ironically none of the heart.

The crux of the story, and probably namesake too, is "the heart," which the film tells us several times "is the most dangerous weapon you've never heard of," able to track almost anyone, anywhere at anytime. A mysterious group of elite agents called "Charter" owns "the heart" and allegedly do good with it. It is able to calculate the odds of almost any situation and Rachel (Gadot) is one of their operatives; she's infiltrated the U.K. Secret Service tracking down some bad person who does bad things, because why else would they be the target in a generic spy thriller?

Only they're not the film's primary antagonist, the identity revealed in a silly plot twist that means I cannot disclose who that person is. I can, however, tell you that it ultimately doesn't matter. A few more "twists " and revelations later make up a plot so rote that not even Roger Moore's James Bond would touch it.

The narrative flirts with becoming interesting when it briefly touches the topical topic of AI being so ubiquitous that only those "off the grid" can't be found by "the heart." And right when the story begins to toy with the idea of using one's "gut feeling" as opposed to machine learning, it's right back to scraps left over on the screenwriter's floor of Eon Productions.

There's also some glorified cameos by not only BD Wong but also Glenn Close, yet even these heavies can only "so" look professional delivering inane rabble filled with buzzwords like "warlords" about "pulling favors" or something or other. I was excited to see both veterans, only to be almost immediately disappointed that they're given roles that involve them to sit, stand, or walk at a brisk pace.

But what keeps "Heart of Stone" from being a total turnoff (or rather, a "press back on your remote") is the action scenes, which are plentiful and mostly well shot. Outside of some questionable CGI during the opening moments, where Rachel is paragliding down a snowy mountain (atop which sits a casino where dastardly men and women gamble, of course) and whenever a star's face is seen on a motorcycle (veiled otherwise by a helmet, of course of course), the stunt work is top-notch, if not familiar. Do you sense a theme here?

Look, I love a good chase or fight as much as the next jaded critic, but the only thing here that is unique is that they feature Gal Gadot as the heroine. Well, that and she's not a superhero bound by the rules set forth by an existing franchise. Here, she's bound by the rules set forth by every other spy thriller ever.