The Marksman

As a bare-minimum action flick, The Marksman is mostly serviceable.

A Clint Eastwood reject.

Not a great movie, but courtesy of director Robert Lorenz, a lean, plausibly entertaining one with all the fixin's and none of the extra flab of deep, incisive meaning.

There's not much to the character Neeson plays, or anyone else in the film, for that matter.

Sometimes it's best to just keep things simple and comfortingly familiar, cliched though they may be.

Jim's a pretty good shot - it's right there in the movie's title - so you know there's going to be gunfire. But in this humorless, standard issue action vehicle, Neeson's aim is off.

The latest in a string of recent action movies that frame the Mexico-United States border as a fraught psychic terrain for America's aging white male warrior class.

The Marksman is perfectly watchable old man reckoning cinema, held together by good performances by Liam Neeson and young Jacob Perez, but it's ultimately not much more than an assembly line of non-surprises.

Liam Neeson is reliably fine in this standard but watchable action flick.

A routine action pic that I can take or leave.