Tag Archives: thriller

Absolution

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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.

American Nightmare

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Spoilers

Unbelievable.

I have had this three episode true crime documentary on my list at Netflix for a few weeks now and I found a time to binge it tonight. What an unbelievable story. Shocking and outrageous in many ways.

Honestly, even the manner the show presented the story messed with the emotions and the comprehension of the audience. What actually happened? It laid out the story in a definite manner that was meant to have audience members draw their own conclusions… and then they flipped the script.

In 2015, Denise Huskins was the victim of a home invasion that led to her kidnapping. Her boyfriend Aaron Quinn reported the abduction the next day, claiming that he had been instructed that the kidnappers were watching him on a camera and that they would hurt Denise if he called the police.

The Vallejo Police investigated but the story of the kidnapping was so out there that they switched gears and began to believe that Aaron was responsible for Denise’s disappearance.

Then, she returned.

At this point, the police began thinking that this is a real-life case based on the Ben Affleck movie Gone Girl, and that this kidnapping was a hoax.

Except, it wasn’t.

This was amazingly compelling. The first episode focused on Aaron’s story and how the police were looking at the case. the POV of law enforcement was a major theme throughout all three episodes. I was shocked when Denise came strolling to her father’s house at the end of the first episode.

Episode two dealt with her story and the horrors that she went through. Again, her story was so wild that it was difficult to believe and it was much easier for the police to believe that a hoax was a much more likely scenario.

I really liked this doc because it had quite a bit of finality to it. A lot of these true crime docs that I have seen have an air of uncertainty to them, perhaps a mystery that is still unsolved. This may have had some unanswered questions (in particular, the kidnapper had told Denise that he had intended to kidnap Aaron’s ex instead of her), but there was a very definitive result which I truly appreciated.

It is a resounding accusation against police forces in the area that did not believe the stories of the women victims and instead, chose to relate it to a fictionalized movie. It also showed that there were police officers who took their jobs seriously and were dedicated to finding the truth, in particular Misty Carausu, a police officer with the Dublin Police Department in Dublin, California, who found the kidnapper, found goggles and a strand of long blonde hair that she eventually tied to Denise. It was the efforts of Misty Carausu that led to the arrest and conviction of the kidnapper/rapist, Matthew Muller.

This was an amazing documentary series, shocking and a powerful watch. I am very pleased that I decided to watch this compelling story.