Liam Neeson in “Blacklight.”Photo: Ben King / Briarcliff Entertainment
Ever since “Taken” was released in 2008, I have looked forward to Liam Neeson’s action movies.

I take special delight in those moments where they push the big guy too far, and suddenly this most reasonable, seemingly gentle of fellows turns into a homicidal wrecking machine, growling lines like “Where’s my daughter?” or “Where’s my son?” Or, as in the case of “Blacklight,” his latest movie premiering Friday, Feb. 11, “Where’s my family?!”

Some movies you take seriously, and some you watch ironically. Neeson’s action films are rare in that they can be watched both ways.  Go in wanting a pumped-up action movie, and you’ll still find certain moments funny. Go in smirking, and you’ll still get sucked into the story.

In his latest film, he’s working as a private henchman for a personal friend, the head of the FBI, played by Aidan Quinn. But that situation can’t last, because of two things we’ve learned from previous Neeson movies: (1) Aidan Quinn (a villain in Neeson’s 2011 film, “Unknown”) can’t be trusted; and (2) friends who are bosses are invariably bad guys (as was Ed Harris in 2015’s “Run All Night”).

The sameness of his movies makes them occasionally funny, as does the spectacle — first introduced in “Taken” — of the bumbling dad who can’t do anything right, except kill people.

“I have thought, ‘OK, maybe this is a bit ridiculous, especially having a “certain set of skills,” ‘ ” Neeson told me during a recent interview over Zoom. “You see this humble father, bringing the wrong gift (in ‘Taken’), and I understand, that is humorous — and then it builds to this thing where the father becomes a superhero. But at the end of the day, you have to do it. I try to make it as real as possible.”

 

The usual pattern with action stars is that they emerge in their 30s, peak in their 40s and then fade around 50, because things begin to look like “Why does Dad keep getting into fights?” But with Neeson, who didn’t become an action star until his mid-50s, the entire appeal is that he seems like an average dad who snaps — and turns into a villain’s worst nightmare.

 

It all started when he happened to read the script for “Taken” before it was cast.

“I said, ‘Gosh, I’d love to do this,’ ” he said. But Neeson admitted: “I thought it would go straight to video, because of the simplicity of the story.”

At the Shanghai Film Festival in 2006, he met Luc Besson, who co-wrote the screenplay. “We started talking about this, that and the other, and I said, ‘Listen, I know I’m not on your short list, or your long list, but would you consider me for this? I’ve done fights with swords and suits of armor, and I used to box as a kid,’ ” Neeson recalled.

 

He got the part, and began shooting the film over the course of three months in Paris, “working most of those days with stunt guys, guys I had to fight, and I loved it, I loved every minute of it.”

 

But once they finished the film, Neeson said, “I kind of forgot about it.”

 

 

The film premiered in France, where it did “fairly well,” and in South Korea, where it did “very well,” he remembered. And he thought that was the end of it.

 

“Then I was lying in bed one Sunday morning, and my wife — God love her — woke me up as she always did, with tea and a bran muffin. She was giggling. I asked, ‘What’s happened?’ She said, ‘You’d never guess. ‘Taken’ is No. 2′ ” at the box office.

 

Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died as the result of a skiing accident a few months later in 2009. Something in the gentle way he refers to her gives one the sense of a grief that is never that far from the surface.
Just don’t get him mad: Liam Neeson in “Taken 2.”Photo: Magali Bragard / Associated Press

It took Hollywood a couple of years to register and react to the great success of “Taken.” But ever since, Neeson-starred action movies have been rolling off the assembly lines. He has fought bad guys on various forms of transportation, from airplanes (2014’s “Non-Stop”) to commuter trains (2018’s “The Commuter”); he has fought the mob from within the mob (“Run All Night”), and the FBI from inside the FBI (in the forthcoming “Blacklight”).

And the trend shows no sign of stopping. Neeson worried about his daughter in “Taken.” In “Blacklight,” he is worried about his granddaughter. At 69, if Neeson can keep this string going, he may someday be working to protect a great-granddaughter.

 

“Maggie Grace, who played my daughter in ‘Taken,’ she recently became a mother, of a beautiful little boy,” Neeson said, “and I started sending her cheeky texts: ‘Maggie, I got great ideas for ‘Taken 4, 5 and 6.’ She has the same sense of humor as me.”

 

Sounds good. I’m there.