By Kyle Osborne
You know, sometimes all you want from a movie is for it to be completely predictable. You want the good guy to wear a white hat and the bad guy to twirl his handlebar moustache. You don’t want one.single.thing to happen that hasn’t been telegraphed in advance. And that’s okay – even us mean critics occasionally like a film that just washes over us.
If this is you, especially during these heavy times, then The Marksman is your movie. Sure, you’ll see a child in peril and the hero will make bad decisions that’ll have you yelling at the screen. But you will always, always be aware that you are only watching a movie. And that is precisely the target audience.
We know from the title that Liam Neeson will have certain skills and that he will use those skills in furtherance of the plot. Neeson, I can tell you from personal experience, is as decent a man as you’ll find in the business. We have no trouble believing him as a former Marine who is recently widowed from the love of his life, and left to roam the ranch in Arizona, occasionally calling in “IA’s” who he sees crossing the border, but only because he cares and because his step-daughter works for the agency.
So with just his trusty dog in the passenger seat, our hero lives a quiet life. One day, a young mother and her son, who the audience knows are fleeing a ruthless Mexican drug cartel, go through the fence and either into the arms of a lifesaver, or into custody of the Border Patrol, but I won’t say which.
Skip forward past the spoilers and we have a road movie where Neeson is on a mission to deliver the kid to his relatives in Chicago. The bad guys are in hot pursuit across the many miles and the film’s episodes put our protagonists in danger and back out again and back in again and so on.
I’m not mad at The Marksman. I think it will be enjoyed by the right audience. But if you’re looking for something that challenges you as a viewer, something where you can’t see around every corner, then this movie misses the mark.
2 ½ out of 4 stars – Rated R for violence, language and brief nudity. Get tickets at: https://www.themarksmanmovie.com/
