Retribution

CinemaSerf 11/7/2023 9:10:17 AM 8.4

"Matt" (Liam Neeson) is the high flying hedge fund partner who is taking his kids to school one morning when he gets a strange phone call from a strange phone. The voice at the end of the call warns him that he is sitting atop a weight-controlled bomb and that his family are in great danger should he not do as he is told. Just to reiterate that threat, he is to rendezvous with his colleague "Sylvain" (Arian Moayed) who is soon no long a concern! To add to the poor man's woes, when he tries to contact his wife he discovers that she is off meeting a lawyer! Can he salvage anything from this perilous, meticulously planned, scenario before they are all chum? For a while, here, Nimród Antal sustains a degree of menace as the mystery unfolds, but sadly - once it does, it's pretty obvious whom the protagonist actually is and the proceeding car chases make the art of simple urban road-blocking by the German police look just a little amateurish! The last twenty minutes are especially disappointing with a denouement that's not short on pyrotechnics but is short on just about everything else. It's a very derivative television movie that if you enjoy the genre, you probably won't hate - the pace sees to that. You won't remember it for long afterwards, though.