Denouncing illegals to the Border Patrol, losing his ranch to the bank and drinking too much is all in a day’s work for embittered ex-marine Jim (Liam Neeson). He is coming up for his spot on a redemption arc, though, when he encounters Rosa (Teresa Ruiz) and her son Miguel (Jacob Perez). He does his customary denouncing bit, but when some cartel soldiers from the other side of the border show up, he does defend the two. Rosa doesn’t make it, and asks the rancher to get her son to her family in Chicago with her dying breath, promising him all her earthly goods. At first, Jim doesn’t realize that said earthly goods include a sack full of dollars and hands Miguel over to his stepdaughter (an underused Katheryn Winnick) from the border patrol – his wife is of course dead because this is that kind of film.
On finding said sack and seeing a car full of cartel people waiting for Miguel to be transported away by the Border Patrol, Jim does change his mind about what to do about the child. As you can imagine, this isn’t going to stay about the money for him.
After the abomination that was Honest Thief, this unassumingly competent film directed by Robert Lorenz (better known as a producer for various Clint Eastwood films) is rather a step back up for our lead Liam Neeson, who here finds himself again in a film with an actual, mostly coherent script (by Lorenz, Danny Kravitz and Chris Charles). It’s also a script completely devoid of any surprises and full of well-worn clichés if you know the genre/have seen other films from Neeson’s Man of Violence career stage. But then, not every film needs to reinvent the wheel (or invent a new wheel), as long as it manages to actually cover its genre standards decently.
Which The Marksman does in an unhurried tempo, seemingly genuinely interested in its characters even though they aren’t original, and spending a lot of time with them before the shooting starts. Even though the chemistry between Neeson and Perez isn’t anything to write home about, the actors elderly and very young do put effort in, never letting the character building devolve into the film shuffling its feet.
Once the violent denouement arrives, it is shot with the same workmanlike craftsmanship, leaving The Marksman a perfectly watchable movie.
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