The Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando, slowly slid the straw from his large cherry slurpee up through his mask. He sipped a few gulps, no doubt in contemplating about what our responsibility was to the downed Banana-Man crumpled on the blacktop. The Banana-Man began to stir, opening his eyes as he struggled to pull himself up. Edwidge, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, growled and looked ready to pounce.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 2024’s Absolution from director Hans Petter Moland. It stars Liam Neeson as an aging gangster with a lifetime of regret. He’s trying to reconnect with his estranged family. I came into this expecting a world weary Neeson unleashing holy hell on the scum in society while redeeming himself in the eyes of his daughter and grandson. That’s what the trailer promised me.

That’s not what I got.

Liam Neeson stars as Thug. That’s his name in the credits and I guess that’s what people call him except for his daughter who calls him dad. He does dirty jobs for a gangster named Charlie Conner (Ron Perlman) and is currently chaperoning Charlie’s son, Kyle (Daniel Diemer), as he learns his dad’s trade. This is difficult as Kyle can’t seem to lay off the nose candy and looks ready to pee his pants whenever he sees a cop around. Thug spends his off hours nursing a bourbon on the rocks in his dingy apartment or nursing a bourbon on the rocks at the local dive bar.

One night at the local dive bar, he punches this guy out who is hollering at his girlfriend, listed in the credits as Woman (Yolonda Ross). Thug and Woman get on pretty well after he knocks out her boyfriend with Woman inviting Thug back to her place to show him her various cigarette burns. Life seems to be looking up for Thug if not for his recurring headaches and memory loss.

When he goes to the doctor, he learns that his brain is disintegrating from being knocked around all of his life. There is no cure and he’d better reach out to his loved ones. He contacts his daughter, Daisy (Frankie Shaw), who wants nothing to do with him and learns from her that his son died a couple of years ago. Thug goes to visit his son’s pathetic grave marker that’s overgrown with grass. He cusses out the caretaker and sets about visiting his daughter. Thug wants to be a part of her life, but she reiterates that she wants nothing to do with him as she has to figure out where she and son are going to live once they get kicked out of their rental.

Did I mention that Thug’s latest job with the idiotic Kyle involves human trafficking? One of the trafficked women pleads with Thug to save her from a life a prostitution, but it’s out of his hands. Thug ain’t nobody’s hero. I guess he has a change of heart later in the movie as he tries to buy her contract up from her pimps with money he steals from Charlie, but turns out one of the Johns got too rough with her and broke her neck. Thug kills the pimps, gets stabbed in the gut in the process, and bleeds out.

This was a fun movie and by fun, I mean the exact opposite of fun. 

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, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, and episode 670) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.