Since 2008 Taken opened a surprisingly durable late-career reinvention for Liam Neeson As a taciturn action star of tough-dad thrillers, frequently dispatching underdogs messing with his family, it’s become the norm to expect more of the same. Especially from an entry with a blunt title like Absolution. This latest variation on the formula has those key ingredients, but the relatively few bursts of violence are tempered by a melancholy revival, and the ticking clock this time is an internal one of the protagonist, identified only in the credits as “Thug.”

As the post title suggests, this is another film where Neeson takes a break from playing a retired government agent or cop or marine to move into the underworld. The harm done to his children here stems from his own neglect of parental duties.

As in 2022 it is unforgettable Memoryin which the actor played a contract killer dealing with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Neeson plays a man dealing with rapidly declining faculties. A former boxer who has spent the past 30 years as an enforcer, collecting payments and making pickups and deliveries for a Boston gangster, Thug is diagnosed with an advanced case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy—an incurable neurodegenerative disease resulting from concussions that started not treating. about six years old, probably from his father’s hand.

That leaves him with limited time to confront his mortality, take an honest look at his many mistakes in life, and fix his estranged daughter, Daisy (Frankie Shaw). That also means trying to get to know Dre (Terrence Pulliam), the pre-teen nephew he’s never even met.

The ruminative redemption thriller reunites Neeson with Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, with whom he worked on the 2019 remake. Cold trackingplaying a Colorado snowplow driver who sets out to avenge the murder of his son by a Denver drug cartel. That film was a mixed bag – watchable but no match for Moland’s homeland original, In order of disappearancean extraordinary Stellan Skarsgard vehicle that more effectively pulled off the mix of tragedy, gory violence and biting humor.

Using many of the same key collaborators from that 2014 film – notably DP Philip Ogaard, production designer Jorgen Stangebye Larsen and composer Kaspar Kaae – Moland delivers a sharp-looking, well-paced film with a moody score.

Absolution remains engaging even if Tony Gayton’s screenplay doesn’t always avoid cliché and contrivance, especially in a final act that stretches to cover too much ground. Additionally, the director’s Nordic sensibility means he spends a nice amount of time on setting and character development and doesn’t use too much sentimentality, giving the material soul and psychological depth that makes you invest in the solitary protagonist.

Thug lives in a neighborhood in Newton, Massachusetts that still shows its blue collar roots. He works for Boston underworld character Charlie Conner (Ron Perlman), which maintains a respectable front with a chain of furniture factory stores. (Perlman plays a more serious version of the same character he played in the instantly forgotten Apple TV+ heist, instigatorsagain with a big fat safe in his office full of dirty money, although in that movie he was a corrupt mayor of Beantown.)

While Thug has learned never to ask questions about any goods he’s carrying, he becomes partnered on errands with Kyle (Daniel Diemer), Conner’s son, who is curious and stupid enough to make him a liability. Haughty and eager to learn the business so he can prove his worth to his father, the kid bristles at the veteran’s sudden career guidance, leading to messy repercussions down the line.

Thug falls into a romance with a similarly unnamed character credited as Woman (Yolonda Ross) after knocking out her abusive boyfriend with a single punch in a local bar. She’s younger, but not so much that the relationship is implausible, and she has her own troubled history. She’s warm, funny, and drawn to him, not scared off by his grumpy side or his reluctance to show tenderness.

When Thug’s memory lapses become impossible to ignore – at first he forgets names and addresses, then more significant things as the disease progresses – he sees a neurologist who gives him two years at most before he becomes unable to care for himself single. He’s about to blow his brains out in the car right after, until the face of a kid in another car changes his mind.

From that point on, Gayton’s script splits its focus between Thug’s criminal activities — including a retreat where he witnesses what appear to be disturbing signs of sex trafficking that will haunt him — and his efforts to reconnect with his daughter .

With his son out of the picture for reasons he’s shocked to learn, Daisy and Dre are all the family he has left. She wants nothing to do with him at first, too hurt by his abandonment to trust him again. But he comes back into their lives and sparks the tentative beginnings of a bond with his nephew.

As soon as you find out that Daisy and Dre are being kicked out of the rent they can barely afford, you know where the story is headed. But that doesn’t make it any less compelling when Thug begins to plan to make things right, even as his sanity suddenly deteriorates and another, more violent threat to his life emerges. With very little to lose, he makes desperate urgent decisions to get what he needs and take some of the burden off his conscience.

Neeson brings his usual gravitas and towering physique to his role, plus loads of anger, pain, regret and an excellent moustache. He has strong support from Ross as a woman who is both nurturing and considerably more fragile than she first appears; of Shaw, hard as nails and unforgiving but not heartless; and from Pulliam in some delightful interludes where you sense the unspoken longing between them – one for a semblance of a father figure, the other for a son with whom he can break the chain of brutality that began with his own late father.

The film’s worst mistakes are vivid dream sequences on the water, on a fishing boat that was the only good thing in his childhood, with the old man (Josh Drennan) giving him a hostile look from the outboard motor. These scenes explain too many obvious things about the stereotype of callous masculinity that turns boys into tough men, supposedly toughening them up for their own good. The film is at its best in its more measured scenes.

It’s not up there The greythe 2012 survival thriller in which Neeson faced off against a pack of wolves in the Alaskan wilderness (for my money, the best post-Taken canon). But Absolution is solid mid-level B-movie entertainment with unexpected emotional substance.

There’s a gravitas to the character study of a career criminal who’s aged out of his line of work, an aspect a villainous drug dealer (Javier Molina) feels the need to remind him of by addressing him as “Jurassic” or “viejo” . It’s a stray relic, just like the faded red ’70s Chevrolet Sport Sedan he drives. If, as he’s hinted in interviews, Neeson is thinking about moving away from the bruising roles that made him an action star in his late 50s, it’s good to see him step it down in reflective fashion, as can still get a few out. bad boys