Impressions of Liam Neeson have been "rescued" all his career, "Sindler's List" to save the Jews desperately, "Air Rescue" to save the passengers on the plane to fight wits, "Hurricane Rescue" trilogy to save the family God to block the killing of god Buddha to kill Buddha. After completing the rescue trilogy with Luc Besson, Liam Neeson still seemed to be unable to save enough, turning around and continuing "Commuter Rescue" with Zomi Sheila, his old partner in Air Rescue.
In 1994, Liam Neeson starred in Steven Spielberg's The List of Sindlers, in which Liam Neeson played a conscience-hardened German profiteer who gave everything he could to save more than a thousand Jews from Hitler's slaughter by hiring Jewish workers. The film received 12 nominations at the 66th Academy Awards and eventually won 7 awards. "Sindler's List" once entered the top three in the history of world cinema, and is still the most authoritative IMDB film history ranking 6th.
Although Liam Neeson lost to Tomhan Kss of the Philadelphia Story in the Oscar competition that year, he won the 53rd Venice Film Festival two years later with the role of michael Collins, the complex and rebellious Irish national hero in "The Magnificent Sky".
Unlike traditional Hollywood tough guys such as Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Liam Neeson's tough guy image is a bit of a "sunset red". The turning point in Liam Neeson's Hollywood image came in 2008, when the 56-year-old joined Luc Besson's Hurricane Rescue, a low-budget film that invested no more than $25 million and eventually grossed $226 million at the box office, becoming a new model of hollywood's low-cost, high-return action.
In the film, Liam Neeson plays the father of a retired agent, in order to save his daughter who was kidnapped by a gangster prostitution gang, he rode out of the dust and staged a scene in Paris to block the killing of the god Buddha. Structurally, Liam Neeson went against the Hollywood action movie routine, sprinkling sugar in the first thirty minutes, portraying a sweet and cute father who was bent on making up for his daughter's debt, and suddenly turned on the killing mode half an hour later, all the way to the end. Stylistically, unlike the previous Hollywood blood-spattered B-grade films, the characters of "Hurricane Rescue" are meticulous, and it seems that regardless of the three-seven-two-one and race against the clock, the killing show is actually step by step, and each step is no redundant, thrilling, and addictive.
"Hurricane Rescue" received 8.2 points of praise from Douban, and then launched "Hurricane Rescue 2" and "Hurricane Rescue 3", although the rating went all the way down, the Chinese box office went all the way up. After three "Hurricane Rescue" shapes, Liam Neeson became the most commercially valuable old tough guy in Hollywood, once entering the top ten for Forbes Hollywood male stars. Uncle Liam has many iron fans in China, and enthusiastic Chinese netizens have also summarized articles such as "Liam Neeson's World Murder Map" and "One Hundred Ways to Kill Liam Neeson".
Just before Hurricane Rescue 3 ended, Liam Neeson had worked with Zomi Sheila on An Air Rescue. This story softens the element of suspect reasoning on the delicate and vigorous basis of "Hurricane Rescue". The story tells the story of the air marshal played by Liam Neeson who receives a mysterious threat to transfer $150 million into the mystery account within the specified time, or one person will die on the plane every twenty minutes.
Bill, a police officer played by Liam Neeson, is in a dilemma, on the one hand, it is almost impossible to ask his boss to pay $150 million into the mysterious account, and on the other hand, his resistance is deeply passive. His first act of investigation was to fall into the trap of his opponent, and he died by becoming the first deceased of the mysterious man's promise. Immediately after the mysterious account was found on the ground and displayed in his name, he quickly evolved into the official "hijacker", the only way out is to race against time to find the director behind the plane.
The story of "Air Rescue" is limited to the cabin at a height of 10,000 meters, and the action scenes are bound to be far less than those of "Hurricane Rescue", but the narrowness of the space also has its own advantages, such as the design of the fight in the narrow space of the toilet, which is eye-catching. The space saved by the pursuit of the scene can be invested in the play of the micro-expressions of the characters, which is good for the release of the acting skills of many main supporting roles.
The fusion of suspicious reasoning elements makes the film inspire a new vitality, the story from the first shot to create suspense, every detail and every face that appears in the shot, is fishing the audience's fire eyes, but you can't guess who will be the mysterious player behind the scenes. A subtle change in one element has allowed the film to achieve a double harvest of word-of-mouth and box office, with less than 50 million US dollars in investment and 222 million US dollars worldwide.
However, "Air Rescue" is not the first time that Liam Neeson and Zomi Sheila have collaborated on two films, "Unidentified" and "Night Feud". Among them, in "Night Revenge", the killer played by Liam Neeson, in order to save his son who was chased and killed by the gang, did not hesitate to oppose the boss and the entire gang group, and the father and son killed side by side. In a sense, "Night Revenge" is also the main theme of the father's love.
"Commuter Rescue" follows the path of suspense + action of "Air Rescue", but shifts the story space from the air to a speeding train on the surface. As the space changes, there is also the adjustment of the identity of the characters. Liam Neeson plays Macaulay, no longer a retired agent, or a human-flesh machine with superhuman personalities or skills like an air policeman, but an ordinary commuter. The biggest difference between him and the people who meet every day on the commuter train is that he was already overwhelmed by the family's financial burden, and he had just been hit by layoffs and unemployment.
Slightly different from the last time "Air Rescue" duty and involuntariness, this time the opponent gave him a rather psychological test option. In other words, if a so-called psychologist tests you and says, "If you were to do something trivial and you weren't sure of the consequences, but you could get a lot of money for it, would you do it?" Skeptical and inquisitive, Macaulay followed the prompts and found a huge deposit in the toilet, and the windfall was enough to solve all the urgent needs he had.
In line with "Air Rescue", everything the protagonist experiences is the result of the design of the vigilance, saying that it is a choice, in fact, it is no different from the abduction of behavior. No matter how much Macaulay struggled internally and tried to dodge, the killing game had already opened its bow and there was no turning back, and the breakthrough and retreat he tried were eaten and blocked by mysterious opponents, and even innocent passengers lost their lives because of him.
The last time the police officer Bill was responsible and missionary, fighting for his life to fight for the safety of the passengers on the plane, not to mention his own life, and this time it was a test of ordinary people's spirit and flesh. As the opening chapter shows, Macaulay is just an insurance officer struggling with the lifeline, and even his job and his son's tuition are not guaranteed. He just follows the prompts to find the person in the car and tell the other party that it is a small matter and a good reward.
"Commuter Rescue" wants to explore more than the suspenseful story that "Air Rescue" shows, and it carries class misery and political intrigue. In the film, good people have to suffer poverty, just like Macaulay House leaks for days and days, but also encounter coercion from those in power, becoming a pawn in their political conspiracy. Those in power can paint black in white, kill him as suicide, dispatch resources from all sides, play with civilians and applause, and they can put a person to death at the hands of others, even at the expense of a car of people if necessary.
This time, Liam Neeson was not a lone hero, just a flat-headed commoner who could not stand the temptation and took the deposit without knowing the truth, but he always saw the tricks according to his conscience, and everything was based on the principle of not harming people. In order to save others, he even disregarded the safety of his family, and was a great benevolent person who would rather sacrifice himself than save others. Although the opponent studied his predicament thoroughly and forced the camp to become a prostitute step by step, from a psychological point of view, they really chose the wrong object this time.
Liam Neeson struggled to get rid of his identity as a secret agent, a policeman, a killer, etc., and became a civilian, but this time the job did not have to be easy for "Air Rescue", and the old Liam moved up and down the speeding train, not only tearing the killer, agent and policeman, but also churning with the derailed train. When the 56-year-old Liam Neeson joined "Hurricane Rescue", many media issued the question of "can you still eat if you can eat a cheap old man", but ten years later, the 66-year-old Liam Neeson is still fighting in the front line of Hollywood action movies.
Successively and director Zomi Shira completed the air and land rescue, I don't know if Liam Neeson's next film is to implement "Sea Rescue", even if there is no "Sea Rescue", presumably life will not end, and Uncle Liam Neeson who rescued more than once will not stop here.