Mark Williams directs Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh and Jai Courtney in this crime thriller where a hulking safe cracker turns himself into the FBI for a reduced sentence, only for dodgy agents to steal his multi-million swag haul and frame him for murder.

There was a point in the Nineties (around Beverly Hills Cop III) where infamously Eddie Murphy decided that his fanbase didn’t want to see him always joking and being smart. So they cut a lot of the humour and cheek out of the sequel on the star’s whim. He was wrong. Liam Neeson has made a similar mistake here. He feels his following doesn’t want to see him scrapping, running and diving about anymore. He’s too old for it to be convincing and anyhoo… he’s a proper actor who can attach emotional heft to one of these vehicles in place of a good solid beat down sequence. So what we get is a competent but thrifty take on The Fugitive… only where the gunplay and car chases last fleetingly. Just long enough to fill a teaser with some variety of peril. You still get Neeson threatening people down the phone and ludicrous plotting. And somewhat surprisingly this unambitious often still unbelievable movie almost gets away with its extreme rationing of the good stuff. Almost…

4

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