In Absolution, Liam Neeson looks and feels every bit of his 72 years playing an aged Boston boxer-turned-low-level gangster whose recent diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) inspires him to try to reconnect with his adult daughter, Daisy (Frankie Shaw), and adolescent grandson, Dre (Terrence Pulliam). Neeson gives a strong performance, playing a man who initially conforms to all the archetypes of the tough, grizzled Liam Neeson persona the actor has cultivated over the past 15 years in action-thrillers such as Taken (2008) and its sequels, but is eventually revealed to a fraught, fearful soul who is quietly terrified of losing his identity to a fog of dementia. (Perhaps to convey that he is playing a different kind of Liam Neeson archetype, he grew a massive, bushy moustache that constantly threatens to become its own character.)

Unfortunately, Neeson’s powerful performance and its attendant moustache are the only really good things in Absolution, which otherwise trades heavily in highly predictable melodrama. The screenplay by Tony Gayton (Murder by Numbers, Faster) trots out a lot of familiar characters and situations, but fails to do anything particularly interesting with them. There are moments that works with some degree of emotional authenticity, particularly the scene in which Neeson’s character (who, for whatever reason, is never given a name) realizes what is in the back of the rental truck he has been hired to drive from New York to Boston, but then there are moments that are simply absurd, such as a major shoot-out in the middle of downtown Boston in the bright light of day under three massive office buildings that somehow draws absolutely no attention. The relationship between Neeson and a woman he meets at a bar (Yolonda Ross) has a certain endearing genuineness, but primarily because of Neeson and Ross’s performances; the relationship itself serves a relatively weak narrative purpose. The same could be said of the scenes between Neeson and his clearly embittered daughter, who simply wants nothing to do with him (but we know she can’t hold out forever). Ron Pearlman comes out a couple of times as Neeson’s gangster boss, Charlie Conner, although Daniel Diemer’s role as Conner’s spineless, narcissistic, wannabe-gangster son is much more memorable.

Without much to do once the drama of Neeson’s fading memory is used up, the film turns to a Taxi Driver-style bid for late-life recuperation through brutal violence against the worst society has to offer, and it works, but just barely. Neeson can still do coiled, righteous rage with the best of them, although that pro forma audience pleasing undercuts the quieter moments when we sit with a violent man who must quickly scrawl names and numbers on a tiny notepad lest he forget them. Director Hans Petter Moland last worked with Neeson on his tonally bizarre thriller-comedy Cold Pursuit (2019), which was a remake of his own Norwegian film Kraftidioten (2014). He manages a more consistent tone in Absolution, although there are some weird, poorly rendered dream sequences involving Neeson in a boat with his long-dead father (Josh Drennen). Despite its weighty title and overall atmosphere of grim existential dread, Absolution falls far short of the philosophical depths to which it clearly aspires.

Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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