ATTACK THE BLOCK (BLACKLIGHT)

It's a waste of time moaning these days about Liam Neeson's obsession with being an action hero.

After all, it's proven very lucrative for him and for Hollywood, helping generate over $5.8 billion in box office takings over the course of his career.

So, here we are again watching the 69 year old struggle with an American accent, driving fast cars and punching the living daylights out of bad guys in yet another woeful thriller.

Mark Williams' 'Backlight' is an unbelievably poorly made paranoid thriller that seems to think it is 'The Parallax View' or 'Enemy of the State'.

Although in reality, it should go by the name of either "The Poleaxed View" or "Enema of the State".

Neeson this time plays ex Vietnam War veteran Travis Block  - a name you suspect Williams and his fellow screenwriter randomly drew out of a hat.

Travis works as a fixer for the FBI or more specifically for Aidan Quinn's director of the agency Gabriel Robinson, a former Army comrade who has for 15 years employed him off the books.

He has a young granddaughter, Gabriella Senderos' Natalie who is so sugar sweet there should be dental checks offered to those watching Williams' movie.

While he dotes over her, Natalie absorbs all her granda's important life lessons like the need for kindergarten kids to check all the doors of the family house are secure or how they should always be alert to suspicious individuals in cars outside your home.

Travis, by his own admission, has a obsessive compulsive nature and when his daughter Claire Van Der Boom's Amanda confronts him at a softplay area about making her wee one also paranoid, he reckons it's not a bad thing and maybe her fixation with household security could be genetic.

When we first see Travis, though, he's extracting an FBI agent who is in danger of being attacked by a gang of gun toting, angry leather clad hicks in the Deep South.

Soon Robinson has him on the trail of a geezer called Dusty Crane - which really seems more like a description than a name and who, we soon realise, is not related to Frasier or Niles.

Taylor John Smith's FBI agent has gone rogue and has approached Emmy Raver-Lampman's investigative reporter Mira Jones about the dodgy death of Melanie Jarnson's high profile activist and critic of the government, Sofia Flores who was mowed down on a Washington DC street late at night in an apparent hit and run.

It turns out Flores' killers were two of Robinson's henchmen, Andrew Shaw's Jordan Lockhart and Zac Lemons' Wallace.

Acting on the FBI chief's orders, Lockhart and Wallace are also intent on silencing Dusty.

When Travis tries to bring him in, he begins to realise the agency and his old comrade Robinson are up to no good.

We've grown accustomed over the past 14 years to seeing Liam Neeson going through the motions in ridiculous thrillers and doing so with an increasing air of weary resignation.

Some of these thrillers are better than others but most are pretty substandard.

That's why, when he does something different like appearing in sitcoms like Ricky Gervais' 'Life is Short' or 'Derry Girls' or dramas like 'A Monster Calls' or 'Ordinary Love,' it's a bit of a relief.

We all know the Ballymena born star can act but he just seems to want to sleepwalk through these sort of action roles.

However with a script as terrible as this, it's probably better to sleepwalk your way through it.

Every hackneyed paranoid thriller cliche is trotted out by Williams in a film that unfolds very predictably.

And so we have characters wandering around like Robinson unconvincingly and smugly pontificating that "deep covers are like birds that keep flying into windows".

We also get Dusty reaching for his Action Movie Dialogue 101 Manual to declare: "It's gone too far. We're crossing lines that should never be crossed."

There's an inevitably cloying moment when Natalie snuggles up to Grandpa Travis and asks: "Are bad guys gonna hurt you?" because "mommy says your job is dangerous".

If that isn't bad enough, we also get to hear her voice when she's not even onscreen as Travis looks at a drawing she's done.

Clunkily directed by Williams, it's easy to see how meat headed Hollywood nonsense like 'Blacklight' fuels the belief in some sections of US society that there's a Deep State in government working against its citizens.

And for that reason, it's a pity to see an actor of Aidan Quinn's talent indulging this kind of nonsense.

Although it is unfair to single out Quinn - the same is true of Neeson and a largely unknown cast.

'Backlight' isn't just misguided politically, its formula is incredibly tired and dull.

Everyone seems to trot out their lines in the movie without much conviction and the action sequences lack fire.

Rather disappointingly, more Neeson thrillers are in the pipeline.

But surely they can't be any worse than this film which marks a new low for an actor we all know is capable of so much more?

When you find yourself laughing at the hackneyed dialogue and noticing how Liam Neeson's north Antrim accent always crashes through his attempt at an American accent when he is shouting, it's a measure of how poor Williams' movie is.

Move along folks, there really is little to see.

That is unless you love cackhanded movies.

('Backlight' was released in the US on February 11, 2022 and was broadcast in the UK and Ireland on Sky Cinema and made availar for streaming on NowTV from March 25, 2022)