Director Hans Petter Moland and Liam Neeson, who made the very, very funny black comedy thriller "Cold Pursuit" way back in 2019, reteam for a decidedly more morose crime thriller "Absolution," and one only wishes they continued to find silly reasons for the now seventy two year old actor to go around and kill people.
Oh sure, they're very bad people, in a way that always seems to exist so brazenly in a movie like this, but this is a dour experience, with Liam, playing who IMBD just calls "Thug," struggles with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which I of course had to look up the spelling of. He sulks around Massachusetts with a most Charles Bronson of mustaches on payroll for his boss Charlie (Ron Perlman), usually of which results in the death of some background character, dependent on a little notebook full of names, addresses and other things we all remember with ease. Him, on the other hand, is given "a few years, maybe less," as soon as he learns of his diagnosis.
If all this reminds you of another one of Liam's films, "Memory," where he plays an aging assassin with dementia, then just remember this time plays an aging gangster with CTE. See, totally different.
Anyway, in true "crime thriller" tradition, "Thug" has an estranged daughter (Frankie Shaw) who wants nothing to do with his, despite his newfound interest in reconciliation, as well as a new lover played convincingly by Yolonda Ross; neither of which know about his condition until it's well into the runtime.
The plot's all boilerplate. Writer Tony Gayton hasn't the foggiest about what to do with a story like this; is this a serious character-study about a dying man or another late-career thriller for its star? It tries to be both but doesn't know how to do either; that's an awkward place to be and the whole thing just collapses under it's own grungy weight.
It's a rote movie, filled with cliche dialogue, a brothel, very little action, a double-crossing, at least two dream sequences, this persistent, pensive sadness and a lethargic pacing that I'm sure almost put at least one of the elderly couples in the surprisingly populated theater to sleep for a bit. And that's a real shame, since Liam really goes all-in with playing a diseased man; you can see a man lost when he stars off in the distance blankly, or feel his intense anger as he rages in response to not wanting to admit he doesn't know what's going on. He really is good here, committed to material that isn't committed to him.
