• I critic films & TV shows. I try and post results of award ceremonies when I remember, and at times, I write on topics of debate.
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Oliver Hackett-Watson

Oliver Hackett-Watson

Tag Archives: Liam Neeson

Silence (2016)

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Oliver Hackett-Watson in Drama, History

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Adam Driver, andrew garfield, Ciaran Hinds, Issei Ogata, Liam Neeson, Martin Scorsese, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Tandanobu Asano, Yoshi Oida, Yosuke Kubozuka

I’ve always been fascinated by religion, more so now in my early twenties than I have been previously. I grew up reading condensed forms of passages from The Bible, reciting the lord’s prayer each morning at my primary school. When I transitioned to my secondary school I attended weekly chapel services, singing hymns and sitting once a week in the crypt to listen to sermons from the school Chaplin. I find Cathedrals and Churches to be some of the more beautiful and fascinating pieces of architecture, as they serve as a testament of the faith that others have to a deity, and I have been fortunate enough to visit many Cathedrals such as the one in Durham, as well as those in Italy and France.

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Taken 2 (2012)

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by Oliver Hackett-Watson in Action, Crime & Gangster, Thriller

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Famke Janssen, Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace

 

Directed by Olivier Megaton, staring Liam Neeson Continue reading →

Battleship (2012)

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by Oliver Hackett-Watson in Action, Adventure, Science Fiction, Thriller

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Alexander Skarsgard, Brooklyn Decker., Liam Neeson, Rihanna, Taylor Kitsch

Directed Peter Berg, staring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Liam Neeson and Brooklyn Decker. The story follows Alex Hopper played by Taylor Kitsch, Hopper is a man going nowhere, Continue reading →

The Grey (2011)

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Oliver Hackett-Watson in Action, Adventure, Dance, Thriller

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Dermot Mulroney, Liam Neeson

Directed by Joe Carnahan and staring Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney and Frank Grillo, this film follows the story of a group of huntsmen who live in the snowy wilderness in the back of nowhere experience a plane crash which turns into a game of who will be killed next in their attempt to survive in the bleak cold. Continue reading →

Unknown

24 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by Oliver Hackett-Watson in Action, Adventure

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Diane Kruger, January Jones, Liam Neeson

I watched Unknown because it was recommended to me as I enjoyed Taken I would also enjoy this. Enjoy it I did to a point.

Unknown stars Liam Neeson and is about a man who lives a normal life and gets involved in an accident which when he awakens from it and no one around him knows who he is, his wife of 5 years doesn’t recognise him, so he sets on his journey of his discovery about himself.

Now I can’t review this properly without talking about the biggest twist of the film so SPOILER ALERT.

It turns out in the end that his character is a spy who has created this identity in order to assassinate a target, but when he awakens from his coma he then places himself in that identity and believes that’s who he is.

Now I very much enjoyed this film with its chases and fights and mystery up until the point where it’s revealed what is actually going on, from here I hit problems with this film. Firstly this feels like older version of Jason Bourne only not as good, it’s the same plot give a few details here and there. You have a spy who has had a head injury he then awakens and tries to find out who he is. Though in Unknown he takes his false identity to be real.

Now one thing which struck me as odd is that these people are supposed to be fully trained spy who have instincts to survive and to kill so why is it then that Liam Neesons character makes so many mistakes. Bourne, though he had no memory, had a large range of skills which made the whole premise more interesting as he could do things which took the audience by surprise.

Neeson’s character makes many mistakes, he hides in the bathroom facing the mirror so that anyone looking into the room can see him, no memory or no memory that is poor attention to detail for a spy. His fighting skills were that off an average man’s using force rather then skill and precision. Even at the end his boss told him he was one of the greatest yet Neeson’s skills were incredibly poor.

This film is nothing like Taken which was cool and clever and good to watch, this isn’t so much. Once the twist was told to me the rest of the film was slightly ruined with my question of “if he’s the best assassin in the business why are his skills so poor and why is he making so many mistakes”. It also seems like a massive wast of time in the respect that why would you send so many assassins after him which all due respect were pretty shocking at their jobs, the man talking Neeson is the train station could not have been more obvious if he had just come up to Neeson and told him everything. In the end all they had to do was cool in the supposed friend and then have them meet up and shoot him, he would not have met the girl by that point and therefore the job would have been done in a day as they planed.

That massive flaw in the plan did nearly ruin the film for me as it just made no sense, I was praying for a good answer to why no one knew him and that intrigue kept me watching the whole time but then it was revealed it just did not make sense to me. Dampening what could have been a brilliant film. Liam Neeson we all know can be fantastic but compared to Taken it was no were near up to standard.

It could be said that the reason they choose not to let him use any skill while he was searching for the truth could be that it would have given away the twist as it would have felt the same as a Bourne film but there in lies the massive problem it was trying to be too complicated and it didn’t work.

OVERALL

** it’s a shame that Liam Neeson couldn’t have seen this coming but I’d stick to taken and call it a day.

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