Blacklight

 

"In hindsight, I suspect I made a poor career choice" - Liam Neeson in Blacklight

When I heard that line, I couldn't help but wonder if it was his character (a tough as nails FBI operative) talking, or Neeson himself, reflecting on his decision to appear in Blacklight.  This is one of those movies that credits its screenplay as written by director Mark Williams and Nick May, but instead should have simply listed the long list of action thrillers it lifts from.  It's a poor assemblage of bits and pieces from other movies.

I don't ask for originality in my movies.  I simply ask that they maybe offer some wit or intelligence to show that the movie wasn't completely written on autopilot.  With the right amount of energy, any tired old idea can seem new.  But this is a tired, defeated movie, where nobody looks like they wanted to actually make it.  It's filled with all the shootouts, fist fights, and car chases that you expect, but it's all done in such a curiously low key and flat style that we're never thrilled.  We in the audience simply get to check off the cliches as they show up, and wonder what projects these actors turned down in order to appear in something this uninspired.  When a movie like this comes along that seems bent on wasting a talented and expensive cast of actors, you just have to wonder what they did to amuse themselves behind the scenes.

Here are just a few of the plugged in action thriller elements that the movie uses.  There's a government conspiracy that's been going on for years, and now a journalist is on the brink of blowing the whole operation, and bringing it down.  Neeson plays Travis Block, a guy who has been in the business of taking out the bad guys for too long, and is now starting to question everything, especially about his past.  He has an adult daughter who he was never there for growing up, who is now a single mother with the required moppet daughter, and Travis now wants to be there for his granddaughter, and do the things he didn't get to do with his own kid.  But, darn it, the agency just won't let him go.  An undercover agent named Dusty (Taylor John Smith) is going to blow the whole corrupt thing wide open by talking to the press, and the head of the FBI (Aidan Quinn), who also is Travis' best friend, wants Travis to keep things quiet.  Naturally, the deeper Travis goes, the more he begins to realize that Dusty is not wrong, and he has to turn against everything he knows.

Was there a single element of that plot you were not able to predict long before you read it?  Blacklight is a paint by numbers job where the creators obviously had no inspiration to be better than they had to be.  It's a conspiracy thriller that doesn't surprise in the slightest, because it does nothing to hide its inspiration.  Apparently, the filmmakers thought it was enough just to let us see Liam Neeson kicking ass again, and that's just not enough to make this threadbare enterprise work.  It doesn't help that we've seen him do it better than here, and seen it surrounded by better material.  Studios like movies like these, because they're easy to sell.  The story writes itself, you just have to give them dialogue that sounds vaguely familiar to stuff people said in other movies just like it.  

To all budding screenwriters out there, if you want to write a script, it's not a sin to take an idea that's been done before.  Just add your own unique style.  After all, a great singer can make an old song new again.  Movies like this might sell, but they won't help your career, and you'll probably wind up sweeping it under the rug when you inevitably do something better down the road.

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