In short: The Marksman (2021)

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.

Three Films Make A Post: This Dogg's got a bone to pick.

Amusement (2008): This sort of slasher by John Simpson is rather irritating. It looks really fantastic, it is slickly directed, and Katheryn Winnick is a fine final girl, but the script (by Jake Wade Wall, apparently otherwise one of the go to guys for pointless remakes) is one of those efforts that tries to be a clever twisty thriller but ignores even the mildest bit of plausibility. Its central killer and abductor (Keir O’Donnell) – apparently going by “The Laugh” – prefers plans ripped from creepypasta which aren’t just absurd and only work when everyone involved is an idiot but could only work in a universe with an interventionist god who has taken quite a shine to the killer, so based on mere chance are they; characters don’t just act like idiots but like idiots following a script dumber than them; there’s a backstory between the killer and his victims that is so underdeveloped your random late 80s slasher has more depth. And so on, and so forth, the people involved clearly believing that there’s no need to put any effort into anything about a horror film or thriller beyond a slick look.

Shojo Tsubaki aka The Camellia Girl (2016): Torico’s adaptation of the Suehiro Maruo manga with Risa Nakamura in the title role is a pretty incredible mix of candy colours, proper kitsch, twisted kitsch, cruelty, feminism, perversion, anti-feminism, star cult critique, pathos and just plain weird shit, and ends with the sort of meta blast that just might make you interpret what you’ve just seen completely differently from what you thought three minutes earlier, or it might confuse you completely; probably – and rightfully so – both. It is pretty mind-blowing, in any case.

Visually, Torico delivers a particularly fine example of classic Weird Japan that uses artificiality in a way like Hausu did in the olden times (and looks great and aesthetically stringent); in sensibility, its use of kitsch and irony without loathing or posturing feels close to Anna Biller’s grand The Love Witch – just with a very Japanese sensibility.


American Friends (1991): Last but not least, this romance (with some comedic elements) about an Oxford don (played by Michael Palin who also co-wrote the script based on the travel diaries of his great-grandfather) who finds love – or really life – through a young American woman (Trini Alvarado) – who very much finds in him what she needs too – doesn’t look or sound like terribly much. Tristram Powell’s direction is a bit conservative at times – though it is neither cheap nor stupid – but the stars here are the acting - with Palin, Alvarado and Connie Booth as Alvarado’s adoptive mother/aunt putting turning out moving performances without histrionics – and a script that understands the past and its people and their respective flaws and mostly treats them with mild irony, a degree of sadness and much love; it looks upon our common humanity and treats these people gently, with the understanding that everyone looks like a fool (or worse) seen from the future (that eternal know-it-all).