Liam Neeson’s Worst Movie, According To Rotten Tomatoes

There was a time when Liam Neeson played a variety of roles, starring as the titular benevolent industrialist in Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” for which he earned an Oscar nomination, and as Michael Collins in Neil Jordan’s biopic of the Irish revolutionary. But somewhere along the way, the Irishman decided he was going to focus exclusively on playing grizzled badasses in a series of films that, honestly, have all coalesced into the same movie in this writer’s head.

It started with “Taken,” Neeson’s hit 2008 actioner in which he portrayed an ex-CIA officer who is forced to go on a violence-filled quest to recover his kidnapped daughter. The film birthed two sequels, a TV series, and as Witney Seibold noted in /Film’s ranking of the “Taken” movies, an entire subgenre: “the Post-‘Taken’ Liam Neeson-is-a-Violent-Dude subgenre.” 2022’s “Blacklight” is one example of this highly specific genre, and put simply, it’s not very good. Certainly, “Blacklight” is no “Taken,” even as it tries to use the same preternaturally competent badass archetype established by Neeson in that original movie. 

To be clear, “Blacklight” is not a “Taken” movie, but it still kind of is. Directed and co-written by Mark Williams, of “Ozark” fame, the film stars Neeson as FBI fixer Travis Block, for whom murder is, to quote his character, “not on the menu.” Soon, however, killing becomes a favorite dish for Block after he uncovers a government conspiracy that involves his own agency offing people in the name of national security. In a twist on the retired agent being forced back into action trope, Block tries to retire from the FBI but is prevented from doing so by his boss. This culminates in the fixer’s family being kidnapped: cue Liam Neeson punching and shooting people. It’s “Taken,” it’s a “Taken” movie.

Williams also directed Neeson in the 2020 film “Honest Thief,” which currently has a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While that might seem like a poor showing from the duo, it’s a heck of a lot better than the score for “Blacklight.”

Any film fan will know that Rotten Tomatoes should not be thought of as the arbiter of cinema. This site maintains that there are only two perfect horror movies ever made, after all. But that doesn’t mean the aggregator can’t provide a vague guide to movies and their overall quality. If, for instance, we were to use it to summarize Liam Neeson’s career, we would instantly see that “Blacklight” is worth avoiding entirely.

At the time of writing, “Blacklight” has a truly dismal Rotten Tomatoes score of just 11%. That’s based on a total of 105 reviews, too, so you can be fairly certain this movie is as much of a dud as that score would suggest. Digging a little deeper, the movie’s average score — a summation of the actual star, grade, and number ratings assigned to the movie by critics — is a slightly more respectable 4.10 out of 10. However, there’s no escaping the fact that “Blacklight” is simply one of many “Taken”-style Neeson actioners that failed to transcend its highly derivative, trite approach to filmmaking.

In Rotten Tomatoes‘ ranking of Neeson’s movies, “Blacklight” is currently the lowest-rated of all his work. The closest film to this is 2014’s “Taken 3,” the sad terminus of the trilogy that launched Neeson’s unexpected action star makeover. That threequel currently has a 13% score based on 123 reviews, so if you’ve seen “Taken 3” that should give you a good idea of what to expect from “Blacklight.” But just in case you were curious, it might be worth noting what the critics had to say about Mark Williams’ ill-fated action thriller.

The critical consensus for Mark Williams and Liam Neeson’s first collaboration, “Honest Thief” describes a movie “guilty of first-degree squandering” and which “returns Liam Neeson to late-period action thriller mode but neglects to supply much of a story.” Not the most auspicious start for this director/star team-up then — which raises the question of why on earth the pair reunited for yet another film that was basically the same as their last stinker. Indeed, the critical consensus for their second effort, “Blacklight” is one of the most damningly terse examples on Rotten Tomatoes, simply reading “Turn it off.”

What exactly did “Blacklight” do wrong? You probably have a good idea based on the film’s membership in the “Taken” rip-off club. But just so you’re fully informed, the Wall Street Journal‘s Joe Morgenstern summarized the film as “not a movie at all,” and merely a “rusted-out recycling bin of ill-fitting themes, notions, poses, conventions, affectations, tropes, tropelets and inert snippets of dialogue from other movies.” Writing for RogerEbert.com, Glenn Kenny surmised that the “Blacklight” script was, “gross opportunism aside, dismally threadbare,” bestowing a single star upon Neeson’s 2022 blunder. The reviews continue like this, with critics dubbing the film “a by-the-numbers action thriller,” “unintentionally laughable,” and “something of a disappointment.”

Needless to say, unless you’re a fan of watching the same Liam Neeson movie over and over again, “Blacklight” is probably one of those examples where Rotten Tomatoes actually got things right.