Liam Neeson under the old days continues the mission of rescuing children from the jaws of criminal organizations. After previously rescuing children, nephews and young people from Russian mobsters, Boko Haram, Udba, HDZ youth, Ku Klux Klan and who knows what and who not, now it’s the turn of Mexican drug cartels. Directed by Clint Eastwood’s longtime assistant Robert Lorenz, in whose (solid) feature debut “Trouble with the Curve” old Clint also starred, Neeson is Vietnamese veteran and naval sniper Jim Hanson. He has been living in Arizona under the old days, patrolling the border and reporting attempts to cross illegally. Old Jim is a widower and lives alone with his dog Jackson, his daughter Sarah (Katheryn Winnick) is a police officer, and one day he will find Mexican Rosa and her son Miguel going through the wire during a patrol.
They are on the heels of the cartel after Rossi’s brother stole money from this dangerous organization, and they fled because they are aware of what fate awaits them if the cartels catch them. After criminals shoot Rosa and Jim one of the cartels during an exchange of fire at the border, he swears to this woman that he will take her son to a family in Chicago. And so will the frantic chase and race against time as the bloodthirsty Mexican assassins are on their heels, and from Arizona to Chicago Jim, Miguel and Border Collie Jackson have a long and most dangerous road ahead of them. And “The Marksman” was exactly the kind of movie one might expect at the start, another typical Liamneeson action thriller we’ve had the opportunity to watch in abundance in recent years. Not Lorenz and his fellow co-writers obviously even had any much bigger ambitions to make a film that would jump out of the standard formula.