“The Marksman” doesn’t unpack its protagonist enough to know his biases or chart his growth he’s just empty when it starts, and fills up a bit as it goes along.
There’s no MAGA-related malice in the decision, and the movie isn’t much interested in “Green Booking” together a story about a white guy who only comes to see people of color as human once he’s forced to spend time with one of them (even if that’s basically what happens).
Jim is an apolitical character who’s too depressed to care about those around him, regardless of where they’re from or the color of their skin when he and his dog Jackson come across an 11-year-old migrant named Miguel (Jacob Perez) and his mother Rosa (Teresa Ruiz) as they scupper through a hole in the border fence, Jim’s reaction is to give them some water and call border patrol - it’s the simple reflex of a former Marine who doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to register the horror on these faces. If Lorenz’s homage should feel so anonymous, perhaps that’s because crusty and cash-strapped Arizona rancher Jim Hanson - hard as he might try to be an ersatz Clint Eastwood - is also forced to be Liam Neeson, John Wick, and the creator of “The Muppets” at the same time. By now such an established action star that the post-“Taken” portion of his career has its own sub-sections nested inside of it (his 2019 self-cancellation marking the end of one and the start of another), Neeson has developed a clear screen persona of his own, and it doesn’t necessarily square with the “Old Man with No Name” energy of his latest character.įor one thing, he reads as sadder than the Eastwood archetype not just wistful or lonely, but hollow. 'The Last of Us': Everything You Need to Know About HBO's AdaptationĮmmy Predictions: Best Limited Series - Was It 'The Queen's Gambit' All Along?
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The story of a grizzled old widower who reluctantly finds himself driving an orphaned Mexican boy from Arizona to Illinois with a bag full of drug money on the floor of his truck and a sociopathic cartel assassin in its rear-view mirror, “The Marksman” might be two three-ways short of “The Mule,” but almost everything about it - from its “get off my lawn” misanthropy to its general take on the uselessness of government in American life - feels geared for a late-career Eastwood vehicle.īy the time Eastwood himself actually shows up for a minute in the second act, the star grinning at us from inside a motel TV that’s airing a fuzzy broadcast of the 1968 Western “Hang ‘Em High,” the nod seems almost as inevitable and indebted as one of those Stan Lee cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But if superhero movies have unsurprisingly managed to outlive Stan Lee, a film as functional and flavorless as “The Marksman” suggests that Eastwoodism will die along with the man who inspired it. Clint Eastwood’s shadow looms large over “ The Marksman,” even if you don’t know that this quick and greasy Liam Neeson thriller is directed by “Mystic River” and “Million Dollar Baby” producer Robert Lorenz (“Trouble with the Curve”), or that it shares many of the same craftspeople who worked on those movies.