BEFORE: I'm getting over my cold now, it helps that it was over 60 degrees today, but I still feel very disconnected from reality because of all the cold medicine I had over the weekend. It's like walking through a dream-state, too much expired NyQuil, I guess, which gave me stress dreams that lasted way too long. Today I was supposed to attend a staff lunch at the animation studio, however someone got hit by a subway train on my line and I could not get into Manhattan in time, so I was 45 minutes late for lunch and had to eat a corned beef sandwich very quickly while everyone else was on dessert. I'm still achy from the cold and exhausted overall, so really looking forward to that vacation coming up in two weeks.
Matthew Modine carries over from "My Love Affair With Marriage". Well, you know the romance chain is over when I'm back on action movies, right?
THE PLOT: While driving his children to school, a bank executive receives a bomb threat that his car will explode if they stop and get out.
AFTER: There's some relationship stuff here, like the lead character finds out at the WORST possible time that his wife is visiting a divorce lawyer, and then on top of that, it looks like he's committing a mad bombing AND embezzlement scheme across the city, so what the hell does his wife think of him then? Like, she knows he's been busy at work, too busy to attend to her needs, and now THIS? Well, at least he's not boring...
But you might think about elements of the movie "Speed" here, where there was a bomb on a bus that would explode if the bus went slower than 55 mph. Just sitting down in his car activates the bomb, and then once he gets the phone call that tells him the rules of the situation, Matt Turner finds out that he can't get out of the car, his kids can't get out of the car, and now he's got to do whatever the guy on the phone with the disguised voice tells him to do.
The whole key to this film is probably the disguised voice - like just think about it for a minute, if the call was coming from a stranger, that person wouldn't need to disguise their voice. So logically we can figure out that this is somebody Matt knows, and then honestly, there aren't too many characters in the film that it could be. So it's simple, really - plus the guy knows all about the secret bank account Matt has in case he needs to get lost very quickly, and also the bigger, more secret bank account that the two company principals have in Dubai, in case they both need to flee the country and get lost very quickly.
But sure, if someone tells you that there's a bomb in your car, pretty much you need to do whatever that person tells you to do - especially if your kids are also in the car. So Matt suddenly realizes this is not a typical Thursday - he takes it really well, though. Between starring in "Non-Stop", "The Commuter", "The Ice Road" and "Cold Pursuit", you might get the feeling that Liam Neeson's really made the same film several times over, and the only thing that really changes is the mode of transportation - plane, train, truck, snowplow and now family SUV. Sure, you can say there's a formula working in his action movies, it's not too hard to see it.
That's really all I have to say, this film kind of paints itself into a narrative corner, but then with the same brush it kind of paints a window on the wall so there will be a way out. Which reminds me, when is that final season of "Stranger Things" going to start airing? And will you-know-who come back this time, and not just in flashbacks? This film is based on a Spanish film of the same name that then got remade as German and South Korean films with different titles. Jeesh.
Directed by Nimrod Antal (director of "Predators")
Also starring Liam Neeson (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Noma Dumezweni (last seen in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Lilly Aspell (last seen in "Extinction"), Jack Champion (last seen in "Scream VI"), Arian Moayed (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "Murder in the First"), Emily Kusche, Luca Markus, Bernhard Piesk, Michael S. Ruscheinsky (last seen in "Anonymous"), Antonije Stankovic, Christian Koerner, Gerhard Elfers, Tina Gerhausser, Peter Miklusz, Luc Etienne, Jerry Kwarteng
RATING: 4 out of 10 snipers with eager trigger fingers
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