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Liam Neeson’s place in cinema history is assured.
The always charming Northern Irish actor has shone as a German industrialist who saves Jewish refugees from the Holocaust in Schindler’s List, a Jedi master in the Star Wars universe, a charming single father in Love Actually, a venerable teacher in Batman Begins and a former CIA agent whose teenage daughter has been abducted in Taken.
Liam Neeson in RetributionCredit: Roadside Attractions
“I don’t know who you are,” he growls in one of the most menacing speeches in modern movies. “I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”
Neeson has worked with many of the world’s leading directors in film, theatre and TV. His accolades include an Oscar nomination, two Tonys, an OBE, an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast and – something not even Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep can claim – Freedom of the Borough from Ballymena council in Northern Ireland.
But what’s more fascinating than thinking about what he could do with Ballymena’s Freedom of the Borough (does it mean an extra garbage collection every week? The right to keep a pet without a licence?) is Neeson’s late career specialty.
For a while now, he has dominated an under-appreciated genre: the plane movie.
Not movies about planes. Movies that are perfect for watching on long-haul flights.
The latest example is Retribution, which has Neeson playing a Berlin bank executive who hears, in a phone call from a disguised voice while driving his two teenage children to school, that the car is rigged with bombs that will explode if anyone gets out.
A remake of the Spanish film El Desconocido, it opened in cinemas this week.
Some movies are designed to take advantage of cinema’s giant screen, pristine sound and comfortable seating. The best plane movies work just as well on a small screen with bad headphones while jammed in economy class.
The plot is invariably easy to follow. If you miss a line of dialogue when another passenger is squeezing past, or you’re distracted by the dinner options, it doesn’t matter.
If it’s the kind of action thriller than Neeson specialises in, there will be a clearly defined hero (worn down by life but with a good heart) who faces a villain (desperate, ruthless) played by an obscure actor. There’ll often be a car chase, maybe a gun battle or two.
There are no sex scenes that might feel embarrassing to watch while other passengers can see your screen, no subtitles that might require concentration. It’s not too long, so you can rip through it between bites of a muffin.
Some people watch films that are made by celebrated directors. But the best plane movies are often made by someone as anonymous as the actor playing the villain. Someone whose name could even be made up, like Olivier Megaton or Nimrod Antal.
The holy mission of these movies is to provide entertainment/distraction at 30,000 feet for people with their shoes off.
Neeson is a reliable presence in a plane movie.
At 71, he is still ruggedly handsome. Whoever he is playing and wherever in the world the movie is set, he usually speaks with the same gruff American-with-a-hint-of-Irish accent. His character will invariably care deeply about his family, even if his wife has married someone else/is divorcing him and his children are busy with their own lives/being abducted.
Neeson stars in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of plane movies: Taken, Taken 2 and Taken 3. Because hiring him guarantees a movie will get made, he has been travelling the world shooting them between more ambitious projects by better-known filmmakers.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King of plane movies: Liam Neeson in Taken 3.Credit: Fox
Single-word titles are a dead giveaway. Like Non-Stop (an ex-NYPD cop turned air marshall has to find a killer on an international flight) or Memory (a brooding hitman with early dementia has to go on the run).
Neeson came to Melbourne in 2020 to shoot Blacklight. Set in Washington DC and full of Australian actors cast as Americans and the occasional Brit, he plays a CIA veteran who extracts undercover agents when they get in too deep but really wants to spend more time with his granddaughter.
The characters’ names showed how hard they tried with the script: Neeson plays Travis Block with American Taylor John Smith as Dusty Crane. It had a short run in cinemas then went on to its true purpose: occupying 104 minutes on a flight.
Liam Neeson on the set of Blacklight in Melbourne.Credit: Ben King
In Retribution – aka Speed In A Car – Neeson is gruffly appealing as a hard-driving banker who hasn’t realised he has lost touch with his wife, son and daughter until everyone’s lives are threatened.
The Hollywood Reporter described it as “90 minutes of mindless streaming distraction”. Coming soon to a plane near you.
Email Garry Maddox at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.
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