Retribution is the third remake of the 2015 Spanish film El desconocido (I haven’t seen that one so I won’t be comparing) this movie is also another you guessed it Liam Neeson action thriller that is in the same vein as Non-Stop, The Commuter, The Marksman, Blacklight, The Ice Road, Run All Night and so many others that have released the last 5 or 6 years. 

It’s gotten to the point where I just have very little to say about these movies because a majority of them are the exact same thing just tweaked around a bit, I guess Retribution isn’t as bad as some of the others but that doesn’t really mean much. 

Liam Neeson gives a fine enough performance but you can really tell his heart isn’t into it anymore, at least with Non-Stop, The Commuter or Run All Night you can at least tell he genuinely cared and gave a pretty strong performance. With this one you don’t feel that at all, a few moments pop up every now and then but it’s not enough to call his performance good. The rest of the cast do a fine enough job and manage to push the movie to the finish line particularly Jack Champion and Lilly Aspell. 

Everything else could honestly be boiled down to generic Liam Neeson action thriller movie elements (the action scenes are actually not awful it’s just they aren’t really noteworthy), they are the same sort of thing they have been in other movies. There is the ridiculous twist that you can easily see coming from ten miles away, it makes very little sense if you think about it for more than a second, I’m not sure how this was executed in the original movie but I’m willing to place bets that it was much better executed and didn’t end up being ridiculous. 

Overall if you like these Liam Neeson movies you are going to probably have a decent time with this one, if you are hoping this one is going to be any different than the other movies you are going to be disappointed. 

Retribution is available on all VOD platforms. 

3/10 D-