Parents' Guide to Absolution

A surprisingly mature vehicle for Liam Neeson, who's spent decades making B-level action/revenge movies, this brooding, fatalistic crime drama really gives him something to sink his teeth into. Directed by Hans Petter Moland, who previously worked with Neeson on Cold Pursuit (one of his better movies), Absolution gives us a complex unnamed character who, in the movie's first few moments, tells a story about how his father made him beat up another kid when he was 9 or 10. But a lifetime of being tough (and seeking his father's approval) has left him alone—so alone that no one even bothered to call him to let him know that his son was dead. Neeson fully occupies his role, and everyone around him—plus places, people, interactions—feels vividly authentic. (Shaw is especially good, though Perlman is somewhat underused.) There's a particularly nice shot of Neeson, setting up a delivery deal in a warehouse full of fish, regarding a crab on the floor that's stuck upside down in a pool of blood and dirty water; perhaps a metaphor.

The movie wobbles a bit as Neeson's character goes through the bucket list of things he wants to do before he dies. His sudden relationship with Ross' character feels a little random, and his attempts to raise the money needed to free a sex worker feel slightly tacked on; these disparate events don't feel connected. But the centerpiece is, of course, Neeson's character bonding with his grandson; while these scenes are familiar, they still have a genuine warmth. Absolution is a relentlessly grim, deeply pessimistic movie ("you can't change the world ... world don't wanna be changed"), but it's also a bracing antidote to the mindless action movies that came before it, showing that violence isn't something to be cheered. It affects human beings in negative ways, and it has consequences.