Liam Neeson’s new action movie The Marksman

Liam Neeson in The sniper.
Photo: Open Road Films

Despite the action movie theaters of the latter part of his career, Liam Neeson has in recent years begun to age gracefully in his roles – so gracefully that he eventually became Clint Eastwood. In The sniper, the actor exudes the kind of weathered melancholy of Eastwood adopted in his unforgiven sure. Director and co-writer Robert Lorenz is himself a longtime assistant director and producer for Eastwood; he also realized Problems with the curve, which featured Eastwood. Clint himself even makes an appearance in The sniper, via one of his earliest movies shown on Motel Room TV. And truth be told, Eastwood is much easier to imagine in this movie than Neeson, whose gangly awkwardness doesn’t quite match the role of a grizzled Arizona rancher.

There is also a little conservatism running through The sniper it might have worked better with Clint. The film follows Neeson’s sad breeder Jim, a former Marine, as he tries to protect Miguel (Jacob Perez), an undocumented Mexican boy who fled across the border with his mother ( Teresa Ruiz), on the run from a Drug Cartel. When he first sees mother and child rushing to his property, Jim stops them and calls the border police. He does not lack compassion; he just follows the law. But while waiting for the cops to arrive, the cartel’s henchmen show up and kill the mother. The story revolves around the guilt Jim feels about the incident: sensing the corruption of the border police and realizing that Miguel would be in danger if he returned to Mexico, he grabs the child and leaves in his truck for Chicago, where the child has family. Cartel soldiers pursue them, casually wreaking havoc and dropping bodies along the way.

It’s strictly good vs bad stuff: bad guys are really, really horrible, while Jim and Miguel are really, really decent. And like a minimalist action movie, The sniper is mainly usable. But it’s also a road movie about an old man and a young child getting to know each other, and the interactions between Jim and Miguel – from a grueling silence to a warm camaraderie – could have been more. oomph with someone tougher, more confident, more Clint-y, in the older man part. Neeson’s raised eyebrows, anguished demeanor, and concave posture have always spoken of penance, worry and pain; that’s part of what gave such power to his reinvention as an action hero. But it also means that his character has a lot less emotional ground to cover over the course of the film, and the story of his guilt, and his growing relationship with Miguel, lacks drama; it all seems like a given, even in the most predictable setting of this action flick.

But the man has reach and I wish he had a better chance of using it. This is Neeson’s third movie in less than a year, and I’ve spent a little bit of a silly time thinking about his career lately. He’s at an interesting time, of course: a little too old to consistently kick things off, but still ranked among the lucrative genre films that revived his fortunes a decade ago. Older actors – men and women – always have to find new ways to be relevant, and very few of them actually succeed in doing so. Neeson has always been an accomplished performer, and at their best, his action films have used his talents more than his skills (think Grey, or even Run all night). But this stuff can only go that far, and I’m curious to see what it will do next. Based on the evidence, however, he may not be sure of himself. The sniper feels like a placeholder for the next act in Liam Neeson’s career. It’s a movie about an aging man who doesn’t know what comes next, starring an aging man who doesn’t know what’s to come.