The Marksman
For God’s sake, can all you traffickers, mafiosos, dealers, corrupt cops and cartel henchmen just leave Liam Neeson alone for five seconds?
Cast of Characters:
Jim Hanson – Liam Neeson
Sarah Pennington – Katheryn Winnick
Maurico – Juan Pablo Raba
Rosa – Teresa Ruiz
Miguel – Jacob Perez
Director – Robert Lorenz
Screenplay – Chris Charles, Danny Kravitz & Robert Lorenz
Producer – Tai Duncan, Mark Williams, Warren Goz, Eric Gold & Robert Lorenz
Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and brief strong language.
The Rundown: Retired U.S. Marine Jim Hanson (Liam Neeson) lives out in the middle of bumfuck, Texas near the border, where he spends most of his days reporting attempted illegal crossings and reminding his banker that his beloved wife’s corpse is buried right next to the home he’s on the verge of losing.
Then his life goes from suck to sucking harder the day he runs into Rosa (Teresa Ruiz) and her son Miguel (Jacob Perez), two immigrants crossing the border into the U.S., in hopes of escaping from ruthless cartel leader Maurico (Juan Pablo Raba). Jim, being a veteran that very much knows the cost of escalated violence and wanting cooler heads to prevail, quickly whips his gun out and starts opening fire on the highly dangerous group of cartel members, resulting in Rosa being shot dead.
Good work, everyone.
But just before she dies, she looks straight through windows of Jim’s jaded, cynical, broken soul and makes him swear to her that he will save her son’s life and transport him from southern Texas all the way up to her relatives in Chicago.
Good Lord, lady. That’s a tall order. Can’t you think of a simpler dying request, like having him dig a hole and just dropping your lifeless, dead body in it? I’m sure he’s got an open spot next to his dead wife for you, which will help him in increasing his tear-jerking leverage next time the banker shows up to take his home. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Of course, Jim agrees to take her kid to Chicago, which means… ROAD TRIP!!!! Yeah, high five!! So Jim and Miguel kick the tires and light the fires together as they hit the road, guilt-tripping the hell out of each other for how much both of their lives now suck thanks to the other and leaving behind a very easily traceable digital trail for Maurico and his henchman to follow.
Pre-Release Buzz: It ain’t January if you ain’t getting your annual dose of either a crappy horror release or Liam Neeson kicking someone’s ass. By now, we pretty much know what to expect with these “particular set of” Neeson offerings, which tend to be a wildly mixed bag. When they’re bad they can be quite a slog to sit through, but to be fair, when they’re good they can be really entertaining. That’s especially true if “directed by Jaume Collet-Serra” appears in the credits of the film, so long as that film is not named The Commuter.
So here we are again with The Marksman, where Neeson appears to be channeling both the no-nonsense ass-kicker he’s now known for over the past decade and grumpy, old man Clint Eastwood. The latter should come as no surprise to you, being that this film comes to us all courtesy of Robert Lorenz, a long-time Eastwood collaborator who has worked with the legend on such films as Mystic, River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino, American Sniper and directed him in Trouble with the Curve.
The Good: Lorenz definitely must’ve been taking notes on the set of Clint’s flicks, ’cause the elder, twilight-aged Eastwood vibe a la Gran Torino and, more recently, The Mule, is very evident here. The Marksman, for better or worse, is easily the quietest, least frenzied of the Neeson actioners, and the film is at its best when it’s just Neeson interacting with the kid (played solidly by Jacob Perez). There’s initially a distant, standoffishness to their pairing that gradually turns into a warm bond, and it mostly works due to the chemistry between the two actors.
Yeah, it’s a predictable trajectory that we’ve seen a thousand times before, but both Neeson and Perez develop a connection that feels genuine and manages to provide the film’s few moments of honest, earnestly delivered emotion.
The Bad: Which brings me to the worse of “for better or worse”, and that’s that not really much else happens. I could go on for days about all the nitpicks found here, like how Jim has lived right next to the border for all these years and doesn’t know even a base, elementary level of the Spanish language. Or how it takes him forever to realize that maybe he shouldn’t be running up all these easily trackable credit card transactions. Or, most ridiculously, how Jim’s able to break Miguel out of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility with little to no effort at all.
Hey, I think I found the source of the immigration crisis. I mean, Barney Fife had his detention centers on a tighter lockdown.
The film’s main problem is that, while it may have the same grounded, dusty, American sheen of Gran Torino and The Mule, it forgot to add in the eventfulness found in both of those pictures. As mentioned, nothing much happens throughout the course of the film. Everything plays out in such a rote, perfunctory manner from the dopey, one-note villains to Kathryn Winnick in a barely there performance as Neeson’s step-daughter who works as a border patrol agent and pops up periodically to tell Jim to bring back the kid, and he’s not safe doing what he’s doing and she’ll help him get off the hook or whatever – blah, blah, blah.
That’s not to say that Lorenz needed to pump up the action and have Neeson batter down the gates, or in this case the border fence, with guns blazing. Far from it. However, Lorenz and fellow co-writers Chris Charles and Danny Kravitz don’t bother fleshing out any of their characters, nor explore any insight into the current immigration debate as an alternative to an all-out flash and bang, explosive action flick, leaving us with a bland cat-and-mouse chase between Neeson and the bad guys that is mostly flat.
I mean, it’s one thing to be overbearing and heavy-handed with your argument, it’s another to cop-out with generic, cookie-cutter statements like, “Well, I just wish the government would just – uh – sort everything out down there.”
Well, how astute of you to say so.
Also, and this may be the most damning thing here, for a film titled The Marksman, barely any marksmanship takes place. But if you’re still awake near the end of the picture, you will finally get to see Mr. Hanson show off what he can do with a gun.
Congratulations. It only took you 90 minutes into the films 100 minute runtime to get to that point.
The Ugly: There’s straight out of central casting stereotypes, and then there’s Juan Pablo Raba’s cartel thug, who says hold my beer and dials it up to eleven so hard when he and his band of cartoonish goons are asked to show their passport IDs at border patrol, he might as well have said “weeee don’ neeeed no steeeenking badges, zeeeenor”.
But then Lorenz, Charles and Kravitz somehow have the gall to even attempt to turn Maurico into some sort of conflicted character, most notably during a scene where he’s wistfully staring at some kid playing a game of catch with his dad, which I guess means he had a shitty childhood or something like that.
Okay, that may be… but you still murdered a lot of innocent people, a dog even, not to mention, your main course of action in this film is tracking down a child so you can also murder him like you did his poor mother.
Sympathy not earned here, buddy.
Consensus: Liam Neeson and Jacob Perez may have a nice onscreen rapport, but it’s not enough to save The Marksman from its tediously formulaic script and bland characters. Consider this one a misfire.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give The Marksman a C- (★★).
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