Retribution - Another Remake of the Spanish Hit El Descoconido

After playing in Indonesian cinemas for more than a month, this film that was released while my wife and I were on holiday was still shown in several theaters. I think some people were still interested in seeing this cause there were surprisingly additional theaters showing the movie yesterday. As we happened to be in the mall where its cinema was playing the movie, we spontaneously decided to see it. OK, I'll get on with it then.

Brief Story Line

Matt Turner (Liam Neeson - Memory, Cold Pursuit etc) was a very busy man working for Nanite Capital under his best friend/CEO Anders (Matthew Modine - Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Full Metal Jacket etc). One morning as he was going to work, Matt's wife Heather (Ember Davidtz - Paranoia, Old etc) asked his help to bring their children Zach (Jack Champion - Scream VI etc) and his younger sister Emily (Lilly Aspel - Wonder Woman 1984 etc) to school.

Unexpectedly though, the car was rigged with explosives by mysterious person with unknown motive who threatened Matt to follow his instructions. When another bomb exploded, the Europol led by Angela Brickman (Noma Dumezweni - Little Mermaid live version, Made for Love TV series etc) were tasked to investigate and prevent them from happening again.

So what would happen to Matt and his family and why was he the target of this threat? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

If you have read my previous posts about movies starring Liam Neeson, you would know that we both like him a lot especially since his performance in Taken trilogy. So even though the film was already playing for over a month, we were still interested in seeing it in the theater. Oh, we also knew that this was a remake of 2015 Spanish movie titled El Descoconido (Retribution in English) by Alberto Marini which had been remade to South Korean version Hard Hit that we have seen.

Despite we were already familiar about the plot, but the intensity was still quite felt here (though probably not as suspenseful as the first time we watched the previous remake). The one thing that we really appreciated was the change they made in the twist. It was something that did not cross our mind because we were so sure that it would be an identical remake (aside from the gender swap of the children). It was a pleasant little surprise for us, but people who had not seen the previous versions might be able to guess it.

As a thriller movie, I thought this one was quite OK and Liam Neeson seem to still have a lot of fans here since there were plenty who saw it with us yesterday. Aside from his name, the intensity was something that we were looking for and I felt it was enhanced by the good sound effect plus sound systems, especially during the explosion scenes. The film was directed by Nimród Antal whose prior credentials include movies like Vacancy, Predators (2010) and few others. So he was already quite experienced in directing action genre.

Sadly though, critics were unkind towards this movie and it was not well received by general audience either which resulted to lack of commercial success. For us though, we were still able to enjoy it and did not have too much complaints. Even Neeson tried his best to give decent performance as distressed father. So if you are his major fans, I think you would still be entertained by this 90 minutes film. But if you are not, then you might be one of those who were unsatisfied. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars