The ski-masked punk howled in pain as he struggled to free his hands from the jaws of the corpse I had on display in the Museum of Schlock. 

“Help!” he said as the other punks laughed at his antics. The corpse’s head kept bobbing back and forth as he tried to wrench his hand free. 

“You probably triggered a a muscle spasm when you were feeling around his mouth,” the punk with the big head said. “I heard about some lab assistant that put her hand near the severed head of the chimp. Got her pinky finger torn right off.”

The punk in the ski mask reached in his back pocket with his free hand and flicked out a switchblade.

—To be continued.

Tonight’s movie is 2023’s Retribution from director Nimród Antal. The definition of retribution according to Webster’s Dictionary is “something given or exacted in recompense.” The definition of recompense is “an equivalent or return for something done, suffered or given.” Liam Neeson stars in this movie. This means that his character will suffer. It also means the guy making him suffer is going to die. 

Retribution begins with a stock broker named Matt Turner driving his teenage son and pre-teen daughter to work. His son hates him for making the family lots of money or something to that effect. He doesn’t approve of his dad’s line of work especially when he overhears him on his car speaker phone trying to smooth talk a nervous investor out of pulling out. It seems Turner’s investment firm lost his clients a fortune recently.

Turner gets another phone call from a man I will spend the rest of this review referring to as the mad bomber. The mysterious caller is a mad bomber because he likes blowing people up with bombs he places under the seats in their cars. Get up from your seat? Kaboom! Try to get help? Kaboom! Disobey a command? Kaboom. What’s a father with two children to do?

What else? The  mad bomber wants money and just to show he means business, he blows up one of Turner’s associates and the associate’s girlfriend and a random police officer that went over to investigate the associate’s car when the girlfriend was screaming she wanted to leave. Yeah, in addition to the bombs getting set off if one gets off the seat, the mad bomber can also detonate the bombs remotely whenever he wants.

Later, we get the ultimate test. Turner is instructed to shoot his best friend and business partner, Anders (Matthew Modine). Shoot your best friend or you and your family will die. What kind of an ultimatum is that, you sick freak! Anyway, Turner refuses to shoot Anders so the mad bomber blows up his friend’s car instead. It’s not long before the Munich police get involved as they suspect Turner is behind the bombings. Will Turner find out the identity of the mad bomber and exonerate himself? Will Liam Neeson get angry and cuss at the mad bomber? Yes to both? Have you seen this movie before?

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.