#Liam Neeson Teams with Predators Director for Speed-Like Thriller Retribution

Liam Neeson has found his next action hero venture, with the actor signing on to star in the thriller Retribution for Studiocanal, The Picture Company and Jaume Collet-Serra’s Ombra Productions. The movie is a remake of a 2015 Spanish flick titled El Desconcido about an unassuming businessman who finds himself pushed to his limits after receiving a phone call telling him that there’s a bomb in his car and he needs to do exactly what the bomber says or else it will explode. Of course, because things aren’t already tough enough for Neeson, his two children are also in the car.

Retribution sounds like a familiar concept and should conjure memories of director Jan de Bont’s 1994 action hit Speed in the minds of movie fans. In the case of Retribution though, Neeson is far from Keanu Reeves’ prepared cop who foiled the plot of Dennis Hopper’s explosive-loving terrorist, instead Neeson is just a regular guy thrown into a highly irregular situation. Unless of course he is hiding some sort of secret past as a highly trained black-ops agent or some such which, this being a Liam Neeson action movie, is entirely possible.

Retribution is set to be directed by Predators auteur Nimród Antal from a script by Chris Salmanpour and Andrew Baldwin, who have adapted the Goya Award nominated Spanish movie on which this will be based. The movie marks Neeson’s fifth action-packed outing for Studiocanal, which includes the memory loss thriller Unknown, the plane-based Non-Stop and the train-based The Commuter, all three of which were produced by The Picture Company.

In this latter stage of his career, Liam Neeson has managed to successfully reinvent himself as an aged action hero, with the actor proving time and again his affinity for punching, shooting, and occasionally throat-chopping bad guys. Alongside Retribution, Neeson has several similar movies in the pipeline with the actor once again set to demonstrate his particular set of skills in the name of justice and vengeance. These include The Minuteman, which sees him protecting a young Mexican boy from Cartel assassins, The Ice Road, which finds Neeson starring as an ice driver leading an impossible rescue mission over a frozen ocean to save the lives of trapped miners, and finally Memory, in which the celebrated actor is an assassin-for-hire who finds himself the target of a dangerous criminal organization.

Neeson is currently plying his trade in the action-thriller Honest Thief. Hoping to cut a deal, a professional bank robber agrees to return all the money he stole in exchange for a reduced sentence. But when two FBI agents set him up for murder, he must now go on the run to clear his name and bring them to justice. The movie stars Kate Walsh, Robert Patrick, Anthony Ramos, Jeffrey Donovan, and Jai Courtney alongside Liam Neeson and was released on October 16th.

As for El Desconcido American cousin, Speed, director Jan de Bont recently discussed a potential third movie, hinting that, were it to happen, he would to see original star Keanu Reeves return. “Generally, I’m not a huge fan for sequels. I had in my contract that I would do a sequel. If you have to, you have to have the cast to want to come back, too, because, otherwise, you have to tell a whole new movie. Because some of the first one was so much centered around him and about him, the awkwardness a little bit in him being a hero. And that awkwardness of being in a position to be a hero is … that worked really well for him but it doesn’t work well for other actors. And it’s really hard to find that same kind of feeling back.” This comes to us courtesy of Deadline.

Topics: Retribution