n Ranty Paragraphs: Blacklight

2022, Mark Williams (Honest Thief) -- download

Blah blah blah, I watch a lot of Neeson movies where he is an "aging ____" who gets wrapped up in something blah blah blah. Sure, Williams did a moderately successful directing job of one of these (Honest Thief) and produced a few more of similar ilk, but dude, WTF was this ? Like, seriously, this was "my grandmother yelling at the TV screen" stupid. And that's even ignoring the fact that Neeson is beyond pushing himself to represent the aging skilled violent man who looks like he is going to throw his back out just jogging up the sidewalk. Not that I know anyone who is in THAT bad of shape.

*cough*

OK, premise. Neeson's Travis Block is a fixer for the FBI. For most of the movie I assumed he was an actual FBI agent, just doing the less than legal work for his boss FBI director Robinson (Aidan Quinn, Elementary), but in the third act, it is revealed for the past 40 or so years, he has just been ... doing the dirty work under the table. I wonder what the line item in the budget was for that. His primary role seems to be extracting deep cover FBI agents who are in trouble, and in doing his latest job, he discovers from one such FBI agent, that deeper, darker things may be going on. Said agent Dusty (Taylor John Smith, Shadow in the Cloud) is trying to make contact with a fledgling journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman, Umbrella Academy) when he is killed by goons we know were hired by Robinson. Now Block is invested in finding out what is really going on.

The thing is that it takes almost half the movie to get to this point. We spend FAR too much of the movie dealing with Block and his OCD and the strained relationship with his daughter and granddaughter, and in introducing Jones and her strained relationship in becoming a proper respected journalist. In most movies these brief dramatic notes would be introduced just to give the main character motivation to leave his dark life, only to realize he cannot. But this shit ain't brief. And it cannot even be chalked up to character building, as only the most obvious uses of this background is even used. It could have all been covered in fifteen minutes.

Another thing. Block is sent to stop Dusty from making contact with Jones, and in response Dusty jumps into a garbage truck and destroys half of downtown Washington DC because ... I don't fucking know why. Because some stupid producer decided the movie needed a destructive chase scene? It just made no fucking sense whatsoever. 

Eventually, after Dusty is killed, and another reporter is killed for stealing Jones' story, a story that they don't have any real facts to back up yet, Block decides to take on his friend and boss. Sure, these movies always have the "confront the bad guy" scene, but in this case Block actually seemed to think that by yelling at his friend to "do the right thing" it would actually accomplish the goal! In response, Robinson unsuccessfully tries to have Block killed, and successfully disappears Block's family. Not nasty, shot and dumped in a hole, which he basically threatened to do, but just sends them into witness protection in about ... 4 hours? Seriously, he deletes their entire lives in less than a day, without anyone catching on that something weird is happening.

How will Block reveal that the FBI are involved in a nefarious plot that has them killing American citizens for the Greater Good? Steal a harddrive that has everything ever done laid out. They might as well labeled it "Evidence to Incriminate Me". Oh, that and he grabs Robinson and drives recklessly, scaring him into confessing to the public. Yup, one nerve wracking drive in the back on an SUV and the movie fucking is ... over !! I was pausing to see if there was another 20 minutes or so to go, so they could have some back-tracking and further violent actions, anything to actually influence Robinson to confess, but nope, "bad driving, me scared, stop, me confess!" Movie over, day is saved.

Oh, and family in witness protection, having their entire lives uprooted and pretty much destroyed? Happy Day, we are reunited with Grampa Block whose paranoia has been ruining their lives for ages, but he saved the day, so all is forgiven!

So, one last OMG thing. Marmy pointed this out to me, as Block was experiencing a bit more of his paranoid OCD, they were doing the dramatic "echo echo echo" thing used ... in the 70s ... to depict a fracturing mind? Well, they pretty much did this scene.

Finally, why was the movie called Blacklight?