Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-01 (Saturday)

Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:

Blacklight (Hulu) - Also in glorious 4k!
   Honestly, it kind of blows me away that even relatively "low-budget"
flicks like this one (though, I guess USD$43 mil isn't exactly
"low-budget"...) are now getting 4k presentations on the streamers.
   Anyway, this was just OK - it's kind of like "The Parallax View" but
without Warren Beatty, the pervasive 1970s pessimism, or the hopeless
ending.
   Liam Neeson plays Travis Block - a man with a "particular set of
skills" - which in this flick involves getting deep-undercover FBI
agents out before they get into "too deep"!! The flick makes clear that
Block is not an actual FBI agent, but an independent contractor. He
works for the "head" of the FBI (Aidan Quinn - which means you just
*know* he's EVOL!!1!).
   First problem, though, is that this was filmed in Australia (Neeson
and Quinn may be the only non-Aus actors in the cast), with Canberra and
Melbourne very, very unconvincingly standing in for Washington DC. (I've
only been through DC once, and even I could easily tell this was not
filmed in DC!).

Well, duh. DC looks exactly like Toronto.

I saw this back when it was on HBO or Showtime.

   Neeson has a perennially disappointed and slightly hostile adult
daughter (Aussie actress Claire van der Boom), and an adorable 6(?)-year
old granddaugther (one-time child actress Gabriella Sengos) whom Block
teaches all of his paranoia too!

Pure cliche

   Anyway, when one of the people Block pulls in from undercover
(Taylor John Smith) starts spouting conspiracy nonsense about the FBI
eliminating domestic political "agitators", you know the guy is actually
on to something. Eventually, a plucky guttersnipe reporter (Emmy
Raver-Lampman) is dragged into this.
   This is nothing we haven't seen before, either more generally, or
specifically from Neeson, and a number of the other Neeson films in the
same vein are probably better than this one.
   But "Blacklight" sure does look pretty in 4k!!  ;p