Pun Salad

Desperate for new movies, I put this on the Netflix DVD queue. Not great, but a pleasant surprise.

Liam Neeson plays an ordinary Joe, a solid citizen, a snowplow driver in a remote Colorado town. His grown son is a baggage handler at the regional airport who makes the unfortunate mistake of being friends with a co-worker who has the bright idea of ripping off an incoming drug shipment. Which gets the kid abducted, driven off to Denver, and murdered via lethal heroin overdose. The Denver cops write this off as yet another drug death, but Liam knows his kid is no junkie, and sets off on a trail of detection and revenge.

That sounds pretty standard by-the-numbers shoot-em-up, and of course that's part of it. But the movie develops the character of everyone involved, even (maybe especially) the bad guys. E.g., the head drug kingpin has a broken marriage, a feisty ex-wife, a cute young son, wacky ideas about diet. Amidst the overall grim and violent plot, there are veins of actual quirky humor.

Except for Liam, of course. He's dour and relentless. IMDB trivia says this is going to be his last action movie, and it's a pretty good farewell.