With the arrival of ‘Retribution,’ it’s become increasingly clear that the actor is incapable of signing up for a movie in which his character doesn’t find himself and/or his family in mortal danger

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In the new action-thriller Retribution, Matt Turner, a financier at a lucrative hedge fund, is preparing to drop his kids off at school before heading to work.

The glimpse into Matt’s home life is hardly encouraging: He’s such a workaholic that he barely pays attention to his wife, who is clearly having doubts about their marriage. (Conversely, Matt’s colleague proudly boasts that he’s a “credit to capitalism,” which is how you know Matt sucks.)

Things aren’t going great for Matt, but they’re about to get much, much worse: Soon after hopping in the car, he gets a call from a stranger who claims that a bomb has been placed under his seat. If Matt doesn’t do what the man says—or if he tries to get himself or his children out of the vehicle—the bomb will go off.

That’s the juicy premise of Retribution, but you’ve probably noticed I’ve yet to name the actor portraying the film’s embattled protagonist. That’s because there’s only one man for the job:

Liam Neeson’s career has covered a lot of bases: He nabbed an Oscar nomination for his lead role in Schindler’s List; he’s worked with the legendary Martin Scorsese (twice!); he’s been a father figure to Anakin Skywalker and Bruce Wayne; he appeared as himself on an episode of Atlanta in what seemed like a bizarre form of penance for a racist revenge fantasy he described in 2019; and in addition to voicing Aslan, the Christlike lion, in the Chronicles of Narnia films, he played an actual Greek god in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans.

(Zeus, naturally.) But for the past 15 years, Neeson has been best known for his particular set of skills in meat-and-potatoes action-thrillers that have been dubbed—perfectly, I might add—dadsploitation films.

Neeson’s transformation into an action star began with Taken, an unexpected box office phenomenon that spawned one iconic Key & Peele sketch and two underwhelming sequels.

Turns out, there are only so many ways for someone to be kidnapped and rescued by Neeson’s retired CIA operative, Bryan Mills, before the whole thing runs out of gas.

(Strange, but true: There was also a Taken prequel series that aired for two seasons on NBC. Like I was saying, people really fucked with that movie.)

But while the setup of Taken doesn’t quite make sense as an ongoing franchise, the film does work as a template for Neeson to play weary dads willing to do whatever it takes to protect (or avenge) their family.

Chances are, you’ve stumbled upon a couple of these films airing on TNT, which is basically the Criterion Channel for dads.

There’s Non-Stop, in which Neeson plays a federal air marshal with alcoholism who is tasked with stopping a terrorist from killing passengers every 20 minutes until $150 million is deposited into a bank account; there’s The Commuter, in which Neeson plays an ex-cop turned insurance salesman who is forced to locate someone on a Metro-North train or else his family will be killed; there’s Run All Night, in which Neeson plays a former hitman for the Irish mob who goes on the run after his estranged adult son witnesses a murder; there’s Cold Pursuit, in which Neeson plays a snowplow driver(!) avenging his son’s death by taking out a local drug cartel. (Cold Pursuit is not to be mistaken with The Ice Road, in which Neeson plays an ice road trucker joining a rescue mission for trapped miners that, shockingly, leads to a nefarious plot involving greedy mine operators.) The best part of all of this: Neeson actually announced that he would retire from action flicks in 2017, which predates some of these projects.

There are a couple takeaways from this impressive run. For starters, putting a Liam Neeson character in a mode of transportation remains a dangerous proposition—my guy can’t even drive his kids to school without the whole ordeal turning into a Speed knockoff. Secondly, it’s evident that Neeson can’t escape the dadsploitation grind, whether by choice or cosmic forces beyond his control.

I’m leaning toward the latter: Neeson straight up said he was ready to retire from making these movies, and yet every few months, I see a poster of the actor looking really forlorn while holding a gun. Case in point:

This is Blacklight, which came out in February 2022 and has an 11 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Now let’s fast-forward to April:

A quick aside: It’s unbelievably rude that this poster omits Martin Campbell’s name and instead refers to him solely as “the director of Casino Royale.” (Show some respect to the filmmaker responsible for the best James Bond movie of all time!)

Anyway, even the director of Casino Royale has been roped into the NCU (Neeson Cinematic Universe), and his reward was a crisp 29 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for Memory. Nobody looks happy about this situation—least of all the actor trapped in a Sisyphean loop of vengeance.

So where does Neeson go from here? Even though the actor is 71, he’s shown no signs of slowing down in the dadsploitation scene—the real problem is that we’re running out of perilous scenarios for him to encounter.

(We’re three years away, tops, from seeing Neeson star in the world’s first DMV-based thriller.)

In fact, the only place that’s been spared from the NCU’s wrath hits a little closer to home: an actual home. Perhaps that’s what these films have been building toward: the Liam Neeson home-invasion thriller.

I can already picture it: Neeson plays an agoraphobic father who worries incessantly because his daughter is starting her freshman year of college in another state.

The night before their big trip to campus, a trio of robbers breaks into their home—blissfully unaware that they’re dealing with a man who has spent his entire life preparing for this exact moment.

The movie will be called Safe Room, the poster will feature Neeson crouched behind a closet door while holding a gun, and the film will earn a score of 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It will be hailed as the actor’s final role as an action star.

Unfortunately, just as Neeson is basking in his long-overdue retirement, a new script will fall into his lap: a thriller about a man protecting his family from pirates on a pleasure yacht.