Review of the film by Nimrod Antal “Hostages”

The action movie by Nimrod Antal “Hostages” (Retribution) was released – an attempt to add originality to the formula of a film with Liam Neeson that has been established over the past 16 years. However, unfortunately Julia Shagelman, despite all the director’s tricks, now the presence of this actor on the screen causes only endless fatigue.

What seemed like a career reset for Neeson in 2007, when Pierre Morel’s Hostage was released, has become a familiar routine. Seeing his face on the poster, the audience is well aware of what awaits them – a middle-aged man and / or his relatives will find themselves in a life-threatening situation, and it turns out that you cannot just take this person: he will save everyone and save himself. To interrupt this series of the same type of pictures, inspiring (false) hope that almost any man, if he is well pissed off, can be 50+, 60+, and even 70+ still hoo-hoo, even last year could not neo-noir “Marlowe”, where, in accordance with the laws of this hopeless genre, the title character performed by Neeson could not save anyone and himself could hardly take his feet from the bad guys.

In Hostage, Neeson is back in the saddle. More precisely, in the driver’s seat of an expensive Mercedes – after all, such a car befits investment fund manager Matt Turner. He also has a luxurious apartment in Berlin, and his enviable virility is confirmed by his well-preserved wife (Ambeth Davidtz) and two teenage children, Zach (Jack Champion) and Emily (Lilli Aspell), – as in all recent Neeson films, it’s hard to get off from the feeling that his role was intended for an actor 20 or even 30 years younger (in fact, this was the case in the Spanish film The Stranger (2015), a remake of which is Hostages).

Seeing Neeson’s face on the poster, the audience is well aware of what awaits them – a middle-aged man and his relatives will find themselves in a dangerous situation, and it turns out that you cannot just take this person

Matt’s relationship with his wife and children is not going well – his wife is unhappy with how little attention he pays to them, directing all his energy to making money, his son rebels against his father’s authority, and his daughter does not obey her father too much. The next morning in their house begins with a quarrel: when Matt, having listened to the news that some unknown people blew up a car in the center of Berlin, is going to work, his wife reminds him that he promised to take the children to school and, of course, forgot about it .

After a couple more fights, the three of them finally get into the car. On the way, Matt demonstrates his skills by masterfully persuading a worried client who called not to withdraw his money from the fund, which causes a new surge of negativity from Zach, who, not without reason, considers his father a professional liar. But then another bell rings, and someone with a modified voice tells Matt that there are bombs under his seat and the seats of the children, and if one of them tries to get out of the car, it will fly into the air.

What the stranger wants is not very clear at first, but he confirms the seriousness of his intentions by blowing up a car with his colleague in front of Matt. It turns out that one of the fund managers also died in the morning incident, and the mysterious interlocutor also knows about the offshore account to which this warm company transferred € 280 million of its clients. Now our hero needs to save the children, if possible, survive on his own, and also fight off the suspicions of the police that it was he who arranged the explosions in order to escape with this money himself (and do all this without literally getting up).

Of course, we know that at least the first one will succeed. As for the second and third, it is quite difficult to sympathize with an obscenely rich investment specialist who pockets other people’s money, no matter how honest eyes, reminiscent of Oscar Schindler, the widower from Love Actually and numerous Irish freedom fighters, he looked at us from the screen. Moreover, no chases in surprisingly deserted Berlin are able to disguise the logical holes gaping in the script, and the adrenaline in it fizzles out long before the final twist.