June 30

We have arrived at the final day for the June Swoon 4: Two Day. The final movie for the 2024 films (“It’s Then, Now”) is a Liam Neeson film called Absolution that I watched on Hulu.

A lot of Liam Neeson films are similar over the last few years and they have titles that are anything but distinct. This movie had the same feel to it. The title “Absolution” seemed just as random as many of the other films. It i snot memorable.

However, Absolution does take some different steps in the story to set itself apart from “Retribution,” “The Ice Road,” “The Marksman,” “Cold Pursuit,” “The Commuter” and such.

According to IMDB, “An aging gangster attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past, but the criminal underworld won’t loosen their grip willingly.”

This summary from IMDB does not touch upon the seminal fact of the story that made this Liam Neeson performance different than all the others. Since it is not mentioned here, I will avoid spoiling it and say that this one fact really adds to the typical character that Neeson plays.

Neeson’s co-star was Yolanda Ross and she was excellent in her role. I thought the scenes with Neeson and Ross stood out from the rest of the movie and I wish there had been more of this.

I also liked the young actor Terrence Pulliam, who played Dre, Neeson’s estranged grandson. The two of them also had some good scenes that gave Neeson’s character more depth than it would have had. Pullian does not have a ton of dialogue, but he played the scenes well with his facial features and looks.

Some may think that this story was too slow, but I liked the pace of the film. It gave us a chance to get into the character Neeson was playing and connect with the choices he had made and the regrets that were swallowing him.

There was a series of weird scenes with Neeson and his father (Josh Drennan) that seemed to be in a different movie, but these scenes did not derail the film for me.

Absolution was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I did actually like a lot of what was there. It has a 55% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a shockingly low 32% audience score. I think it is much better than that.