Metacritic reviews

Yes, it feels as if we’ve seen this movie before — but thanks to the suitably gritty and grainy, New England-set direction by Hans Petter Moland, the still-resonant star power of Neeson and a terrific supporting cast, “Absolution” delivers a punch with a sting all its own.

Moland delivers a sharp-looking, well-paced movie with a moody score.

The film’s various elements do not quite meld, and despite a few strong performances, none of the characters feel fully three-dimensional.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

It’s not that Absolution is any worse than the awful likes of “Retribution” (quite the opposite), but this seedy crime saga makes it uniquely clear that Neeson’s special set of skills have taken him as far as they can.

Wrapped in drab visuals and a doomy atmosphere, Absolution paints a world where lowlifes rule and neither doctors nor priests can be trusted. Yet there are moments when the beatdowns pause and a misty melancholy shines through.

The film isn’t necessarily terrible, but it proves to be deeply unmemorable by offering viewers little more than a rehash of things they have presumably seen before and then taking an unconscionable amount of time to do so.

Neeson]’s trapped once again in tired tough guy material, bringing gravity to a film that’s already dragging him — and the audience — down.

Any grace notes 70something Liam Neeson brings to his aging and about to become infirm man of action in Absolution are pretty much overwhelmed by cliches, loose ends and overreaches in a sloppily pieced-together screenplay.

While the film does make an admirable effort to focus on Neeson's action hero as a true character rather than a mere blunt instrument for fight scenes, but thanks to an overly cliché screenplay, the movie will likely be another forgettable action film in Neeson's filmography.