How many different ways can we say "revenge"?

It should be perfectly obvious that half the action movies out there -- and probably all the action movies featuring Liam Neeson -- deal in some way with the concept of revenge. Revenge for something that's already occurred, or pre-revenge for something that might hypothetically occur. 

Now, the task is just to communicate that in the title.

I find Neeson's most recent film, set to be released this August, a particularly humorous example of that.

The title Retribution has almost a clinical, scientific quality to it. While the words "revenge" and "vengeance" both have a raw, bloodthirsty quality to them -- you can almost taste the blood -- "retribution" is the version of the word you'd see appearing in a legal document. Someone's motive in a crime seems much more suitable for court when it is described as "retribution" rather than "revenge."

Therefore, I would argue it doesn't roll of the tongue very well, which is one of the more important elements to consider when coming up with a title.

It also really feels like they just went to a thesaurus to see what other synonyms they could find for "revenge."

If that's the case, in the future you can expect the following Neeson movies to come out:

Reprisal
Repayment
Avengment (really?)
Reciprocation 
Comeuppance
Requital 
Counterplay
Counterblow
Satisfaction

All of those don't work equally well ... but most of them are still available. 

Get them before Neeson does. 

Qui-Gon Jinn reads The Polar Express

I've had Star Wars on the brain this holiday season, as you can tell from my last x number of posts.

So it was appropriate that none other than Qui-Gon Jinn read us The Polar Express on Christmas Eve.

Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 storybook is a Christmas tradition that I have brought from my own childhood into my children's childhoods. But there are specific rules around this tradition; the story gets read only once each year, that being Christmas Eve.

Except not this year, it appeared.

Despite reminding myself not to forget it when packing for our trip to Tasmania, I did indeed leave behind our weathered copy of the story -- the one from my childhood -- on our bookshelf at home.

I remembered it at dinner on Monday night, and immediately felt dismayed.

Then yesterday I got an idea. What if the internet could read it to us?

Of course the internet could do that. In fact, Liam Neeson could do it.

The first result when I searched "polar express storybook" on YouTube was, indeed, a 16-minute reading of the story by the world's most prominent Irish actor. And though there were some things he said earlier in the year that made me sort of want to cancel him, well, it's Christmastime, a time for forgiveness.

Plus, I'd just heard his voice -- twice now -- in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

So we pulled up to the hearth of my laptop -- my wife, my kids, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law -- and listened to Neeson's marvelous brogue read my beloved Christmas Eve story, the one that distills the magic of Christmas in a way that never quite extinguishes, no matter how old you get or how many stressors undermine your holiday season.

And even though there was music, which didn't always work, and even though some pages were lingered on longer than it seemed they needed to be, and even though the camera moved across the page rather than giving us a full still image of each glorious page in Van Allsburg's book, it was my traditional fulfilled, and Christmas is all about tradition.

What's more, the looks on the faces of my family seemed to involve genuine joy, both those who knew the story well and those who were hearing it for the first time.

Merry Christmas, and may the force be with you.

My own personal Liam Neeson boycott

I read with no small amount of shock the comments Liam Neeson has made about his desire to commit race-based revenge some years back.

At the time I read it, I was tossing up whether to make his latest thriller, Cold Pursuit, my first theatrical movie of 2019, or to select the other movie released today, Escape Room. I’ll be reviewing whichever film I see. And I was only nine hours away from having to make the decision at the time I read it.

I had been leaning toward Cold Pursuit, but Neeson’s comments made my decision easy.

If you aren’t familiar with what he said, unprompted, to an interviewer, it was that a friend of his had been sexually assaulted while he was abroad. When he returned home, he asked about the skin color of her unknown assailant and learned he was black. He then went around – for a whole week, by his own admission, with concealed weapon in hand – hoping a black guy would start something with him on the street so he could commit a kind of vengeance by proxy.

Wow.

The problems with this are so many that I don’t know where to start, but let’s be generous and start with something in Neeson’s favor. Although it was, or could be, a kind of career suicide to have done so, Neeson deserves some credit for coming forward with this story, though you wouldn’t think it would be necessary purely for selling the movie. He’s made about 22 revenge thrillers before this, and never before now did he feel it was necessary to haul out this story, to try to scare up a few additional bucks by suggesting the ways he identifies with the character he’s playing. His movies do pretty well for movies that are almost always released very early in the year. But still, I do appreciate his attempts at being forthright, on some level.

What’s completely short-sighted about the whole thing is that he thought was confessing to one thing and was really confessing to another. It’s almost what a #metoo accused would do, trying to get ahead of negative press by confessing something lesser, though in this case nobody would have ever found out about it had Neeson not felt compelled to reveal it to us completely out of nowhere. Neeson thought he was confessing to the shame of having murderous, revenge-driven thoughts. Instead, he was confessing to the worst kind of racial profiling, one where it doesn’t even matter to you if you’re enacting your vengeance against the correct person, as long as he has the same skin color as that person.

Why in his story did Neeson even need to ask his friend what her attacker’s skin color was? Was that going to make it more likely for him to find the correct person? Or was he doing it for the same reason that we all look over at the person who was driving like an idiot once we’ve passed them, to see if that driver conforms to some kind of deep-seated prejudice about the types of people we think are more likely to be bad drivers? Did Neeson want to know if it was a “black bastard” (using his own words from the interview, which he presented with air quotes) because he assumed only someone like that could commit a crime like this? More likely was that the characteristics of her assailant came up more organically in the discussion of what happened, but Neeson himself presented the story as him having asked for that detail. Dumb.

So yeah, I’m seeing Escape Room tonight.

The temptation would be that this would actually prompt me to see Cold Pursuit, so I could write a review slamming Neeson. I could take this opportunity to use my own particular soap box to pile on to the cavalcade already flowing in Neeson’s direction. (And I suppose I’m actually doing that now, through this particular soap box.)

But you probably know I believe in separating the art from the artist as much as possible. It’s the philosophical approach to film criticism that I’ve chosen and I hope to keep sticking to it as long as I find it tenable.

But I don’t want there to be the chance that I’ll like Cold Pursuit and write a positive review of it in the days immediately following Neeson’s completely obtuse revelation of his own deep-seated prejudices.

Not reviewing it at all is the least I can do.

Neeson was already likely approaching the end of his revenge thriller days at age 66. This will escalate that. And apparently, he's going senile in addition to being racist. 

The Irish Nicolas Cage?

Okay, who's excited for Liam Neeson's slate of upcoming movies in 2012?

That would be:

Wrath of the Titans
Battleship
Taken 2

Don't answer all at once.

Fortunately, I've already seen his first 2012 movie, The Grey, and I can tell you it's pretty good.

The rest of them ... well, if it were Nicolas Cage playing those same roles, don't you think he'd take some crap?

It should be obvious to anyone reading this why Liam Neeson is a cut above Nicolas Cage. But I think we need to take a look at it more closely.

Cage doesn't seem to turn down any roles. Lately, neither does Neeson.

Cage is a former Oscar winner who's acted in a bunch of big-budget crap. So is Neeson.

Cage often plays a character who was wronged and has come to kick some ass. So does our Teflon Liam.

Yet Neeson is teflon -- none of these decisions ever stick to him. No one ever says "What crap is Liam Neeson making now?"

This realization about Liam Neeson occurred to me when I was in the grocery store tonight. The DVD for The A-Team was at the checkout stand, begging someone to buy it for the bargain price of just $19.99.

Now, I actually liked The A-Team. But it doesn't mean seeing that movie there on that rack didn't make me say "Man, that Liam Neeson sure does make some schlock."

Shall we go on? Neeson's period of craptitude may go back to 2009, when the first Taken came out. That's when he developed the reputation of a guy appearing in vigilante thrillers who might want to kick someone's ass ... much like the reputation Cage has. Appearing in Unknown in 2011 surely helped Neeson further down that path, such that when the trailers for The Grey came out, people were joking "Hey, it's that movie where Liam Neeson punches a wolf in the face." Sure, such a moment was actually alluded to in the trailer -- but it doesn't mean people weren't thinking of the Neeson who delivered that "I will hunt you down, I will find you and I will kill you" speech in Taken. Except this time he's making that threat to a wolf.

Like Cage, Neeson has also gotten himself entrenched in a number of high-profile series. While Cage has been the face of such series as National Treasure and Ghost Rider, Neeson has been busy popping up everywhere from the Star Wars prequels (well, just one) to the Chronicles of Narnia movies. And oh yeah, he's also in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies -- he was in Batman Begins, and his fifth film on the 2012 calendar is The Dark Knight Rises.

One difference in Cage's favor is that he's actually mixed in some respectable work in the past couple years. While Cage was praised for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Kick-Ass, Neeson hasn't gotten a real whiff of critical acclaim since Kinsey back in 2004. In fact, Cage even has the more recent Oscar nomination, back in 2002 when he was up for Adaptation. Neeson's last Oscar nomination was in 1993 for Schindler's List -- and in fact it was his only nomination. (Even though he ought to have gotten one for Kinsey.)

But there's almost no doubt in our minds that Neeson is the better actor, right? Is it the gruff sense of gravitas he brings to his roles? Or is it just the fact that he doesn't expose himself to the same kind of ridicule Cage exposes himself to by not taking the risks Cage takes?

Don't get me wrong -- the point of this piece is not to prove that Cage is a better actor, or that he is in some way unworthy of the criticism he gets. I have laughed and shaken my head at Cage numerous times, and I believe he has deserved it each and every time. No one's saying Cage is portrayed unfairly. Most often the way he's characterized is pretty dead on.

But it's just interesting to me how Neeson gets a total free pass. I mean, Battleship? Have you seen how ridiculous that looks? If Nicolas Cage had taken that role, we'd be howling. But Neeson takes it and we don't blink. Is it possible that Neeson just fades into the background more easily? Do we kind of "look past" him?

You might also say that Cage has the courage of his convictions: At least he knows his movies are bad. The movies know they're bad, too. Most of the time. Neeson's bad movies seem more serious, like they're trying to be good. (And yes, I thought Taken was bad, even though it was a certified hit for him.)

It's funny, because this impression of Neeson as a fairly unselective actor just doesn't penetrate the first few layers of our brains. I guested on a film podcast last year and Battleship came up. I said something along the lines of "It's funny how we've gotten to the point where Liam Neeson, an Oscar winner, is in the Battleship movie." It's as though Neeson has cast a spell over us that makes us see him as so regal, so dignified. In fact, he's been making the Battleship movie for at least a couple years now, hasn't he?

The thing is, Neeson is not actually an Oscar winner. Even earlier in this piece I listed him as being one. It's only in my subsequent research that I'm realizing he did not actually win the Oscar for Schindler's List. But see, that's kind of the point. Admit it -- when I said Neeson was an Oscar winner, you didn't blink, did you? Neeson makes us think he's an Oscar winner with that smooth voice, that rugged sense of confidence, that idea that there's no piece of dialogue that might best him.

Hold on there. It sounds like I'm going negative on Neeson. I'm not, really. I very much like the man. But again, that's the point -- has he really earned it? Or is he just a really effective snake oil salesman, and what he's selling us is his persona?

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to think that there's a sad reason for Neeson throwing himself so wholeheartedly into his work for the past three years. When Neeson's wife, the darling actress Natasha Richardson, died during a skiing accident in March of 2009, I imagine it must have been incredibly sad for him. Theirs did not seem to be one of those Hollywood marriages built on a sham and bound for collapse. I felt that Neeson must have grieved deeply for her. Maybe he filled the hole by making a bunch of Clash of the Titans movies.

And because he seems like a nice man who would have been a loving husband and father, I don't mind so much that no one accuses Neeson of appearing in a bunch of stuff that's beneath him. If making a thinly-veiled Transformers rip-off that's a big-screen adaptation of a board game involving red and white pegs helps distract him from his loss, more power to him.

But I still don't think I'm going to be in line for Battleship.

You're more likely to see me at Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

(Hey, I'm curious to see what Neveldine/Taylor might bring to it.)