The Liquidator (2011) User Reviews

Disappointed

[bounce-rubbish · 4/10 · 23 September 2012]

I was unable to watch this movie through to the end the first time I watched it- it was that disappointing for me. The second time I watched it was also not from start to finish, but from where I left off.

I found the dialogue fragmented, disjointed and not a lot of acting coherence. The fight scenes were well done, but the broken rhythm of dialogue just left me cold

I was possibly was also turned off by the dubbed over voices as they just didn't seem to suit the characters - but it still didn't hold my attention even when I muted the sound. (one of my tests on whether a movie has any substance is to also watch it as a silent movie and see whether the acting and cinematography alone can hold my attention)

SAFE DRIVING IN EXTREME CONDITIONS

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 14 December 2018]

This film was made in the Republic of Kazakhstan which accounts for the oriental looking actors and Russian script on everything. If you want to know what the Russian documents say, you need to set up the film with English subtitles. The dubbing was horrible and included foul language not in the subtitles. In one scene a man pushes a woman out of his way onto a bed. He says, "Shut you face" but the subtitles read "relax" giving the scene a slightly comedic "What's Up Tiger Lily" effect.

Arsen (Aitzhanov Berik) is a former special agent working as a body guard. When his brother is killed, Arsen uses his skills to avenge his death as a vigilante. As he does, two elderly gentlemen seem to show up at random and want to recruit him for ???? With the law hunting him, and kills adding up, the higher ups in the business world have hired Vinnie Jones to kill Arsen, because that was the biggest named actor Kazakhstan could afford and only for the last half of the film.

The movie did have a twist I didn't see coming, perhaps due to the translation issues. One of the certificates in the dossier of Arsen is "Safe Driving in Extreme Conditions." Eat you heart out Jason Bourne!

PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bomb. No sex, no nudity.

It started out great, but failed to keep up what it started...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 27 August 2013]

For a movie taking place in Kazakhstan, then there was a surprisingly large congregation of Asians everywhere. I just didn't understand that aspect of the movie. It didn't matter where were were in the movie, be it airport, restaurant, police station, theater, etc., then there were heaps of Asians everywhere.

Regardless, then this action thriller had potential, and "The Liquidator" was interesting to an extend. I made it to about one hour into the movie, then it was like all air just deflated from the balloon and the movie became a drag to sit through and it became irritating to sit through.

The story is about Arsen (played by Aitzhanov Berik) who, upon the news of his brothers death, starts a personal vendetta against those responsible, leaving both the law enforcement and the criminals in a stupor as he goes about doing his act of vengeance.

There was a good feeling to the movie, but then it was as if the director wanted to make the storyline too complex and weave more threads interwoven with one another, leaving the audience in the dark. And it just became too much, killing off the suspense that the movie had built up, not to mention killing off the actual enjoyment of the movie.

I will say that the actors in the movie did good jobs with their given roles, and this does count heavily in favor for the movie.

It was a shame that the tried to take on too much towards the last third part, resulting in a confusing and rather pointless mess, because "The Liquidator" really did have potential to be a great action thriller.

awful

[samtfaulkner · 1/10 · 29 August 2012]

This is a film starring Vinnie Jones and he does not have one line. He only appears in the movie for about 10 minutes in total and does not play an interesting character.

Very bad cinematography.

Camera constantly changing angle, shaking,cutting between camera angles, zooming in and out randomly.

This and a poor storyline which was difficult to follow made this not worth watching, at all.

I usually like to add something positive about a film but nothing in this film was worth praising.

Avoid

False Advertising

[gtfo-78-427994 · 1/10 · 7 September 2012]

Well one look at the poster and you would think Vinnie Jones is the leading actor in this. However that is not the case he does not show up till the end for what is more like a guest appearance. It's obvious they used Vinnie Jones just to drive their sales. People wonder why piracy exist and this is a grade A example! Really if I could do it over I would not even download this movie.

I want my 90 minuets & my 2$ back that it cost for me to rent this garbage. If I could get my 90 minuets back I'd so something far more enjoyable like sticking my hand in a wood chipper.

The acting is horrible and it makes me wonder how much they paid Vinnie Jones to appear in this disastrous thing that I won't even classify as a movie.

Waste of time

[kantone · 2/10 · 16 September 2012]

The only reason I rated it 2, was because of the few fight scenes. The movie is pointless and drags with wasted dialog just to fill screen time. They use false advertising with Vinnie Jones face on the box cover, but he had less impact and screen time as one of the off-screen key grips for the movie!

I had to write this article to warn people not to be mislead. I checked IMDb's rating breakdown and it has 38 users voting this movie as a 10. You know those users are paid individuals or associated with the movie. So do not always believe the super ratings on IMDb. To verify the user's credibility, always check how many movies they have rated and if their ratings are always 7 or above, talking about how great some of these non-blockbuster movies are.

Not a bad story and very good action sequences.

[mark-flyfisherman-998-524527 · 7/10 · 11 May 2014]

The fight scenes are well choreographed and the cinematography is a lot better than some more well known offerings. Ignore the Vinnie Jones picture on the promotional material as its inaccurate depiction of him as the main star is neither here nor there and certainly doesn't detract from the movie. As an Englishman I am rather pleased that Vinnie Jones did not appear as billed. He is, in my opinion, not a great actor and if he had taken a more major role then the film would be all the worse for it. This is a good film that also gives an insight into a different culture and landscape and it has a story that can be followed easily enough, given the good subtitles and the genre clichés that are used to good effect. OK so there is nothing very original about The Liquidator but as an introduction to the Kazakhstan film industry it leaves me hoping more, ever improving, movies of international appeal will soon be forthcoming.

Disastrous

[ulric99 · 1/10 · 9 September 2012]

1) ignore the fact that Vinnie Jones gets a mention on the cover. It's just to try and entice people to hire /buy the movie. He's got little more than a cameo appearance.

2) was it just me, or did some of the English voices (dubbed over Russian speakers), sound the same ? the spoken lines were so stilted and painful to listen to, the movie could well have been on mute.

3) the storyline was woeful. it dragged on and while *some* of the fight scenes were OK, it was not on the same playing field as a James Bond, Jason Bourne or any movie with Jason Statham.

4) it's my considered opinion that most of the people who gave it a rating over 8 were part of the film crew. this movie is up there with "Bad Karma" (another shocker of a recent release).

do yourself a favour and just give this a 1/10 rating without bothering to watch - you will save your own time and money and, perhaps the time and money of someone who is considering watching this sh*t-fest of a movie.

Not bad as expected

[Viva_Chiba · 7/10 · 7 March 2013]

I expected a real turd by reading other comments here and i decided to check the movie by myself and it wasn't as bad as expect, this is not really an "action" movie, it's a thriller with some brief action scenes (mostly fights and gunfights) thrown in, the plot was good enough to not bore and the film had some good twists.

Unfortunately, the editing for the action scenes is mediocre (a bit like the Bourne series), but at least, there is no shaky cam.

Everybody here seems to be disappointed by the fact that Vinnie Jones isn't the main character (despite being top billed in the cover, he has less than 15 minutes of screen time and he has no lines), but the other actors did a good job.

Now i'm looking forward to see other action movies from Kazakhstan, i'm pretty sure that they have a lot to offer.

Waste of time and money

[bethany_heck · 3/10 · 15 February 2013]

I was extremely disappointed. The trailer, the box, and the over-all hype was seemingly about Vinnie Jones being the lead actor when he barely came into play at the end. Falsely advertised movie by using Vinnie Jones to sell it. I could barely get through the movie. The dialog was fragmented and just the acting in relation to the quality of being seemingly real was terrible. Terrible screen direction and terrible and a lot of useless dialog to drag the movie on for just a couple fight scenes. Why Vinnie Jones wanted to go through with this movie and these amateur actors, I don't know but I would pass up this movie and find something better to do with the 20 minutes of your life before you end up turning off the movie and start cursing.

This movie is fantastic in context of its own genre.

[yarik83 · 8/10 · 31 July 2013]

If you know anything about cinema then you will know that Hollywood is not the only entity to produce movies. As such every country has their own actors and producers and directors and filming crew. Every country does it their own way using whatever budget they have.

Having lived in Kazakhstan for a year this movie is very dear to me because I actually went to Alma-Ty a few times during my stay. That being said let's look at what this movie has to offer.

As one might guess this movie was filmed in Kazakhstan and in Russian language. Before collapse of USSR a lot of Russians were stationed there so naturally that is why you see Asian people intermixed with Caucasian people. Movie is obviously in Russian so all documents and text and screens and news and whatever else are all in Russian. This has not been filmed for American audience and why should it? Americans do not watch foreign cinema so for those of you getting all bent out of shape over how much time so and so had on the screen, rest assured that any man getting paid to do his job will not refuse it, even if it is a bad movie he is starring in. Money is money.

In this case movie is actually very good. Make no mistake this is not a masterpiece but in the context of the genre and in the context of audience it was targeted for this is a film noir, law and order/Bourne flavored movie. We have the guy who seeks justice and dialog is actually very relevant to the movie. I have not watched dubbed version so I watched this in its native tongue and in Russian dialog was right on point. It was not fake, it was not contrived... it was very real and right to the point.

Some notable things about the movie. You saw an obvious clash of cultures. You have the traditionalist Kazakh society and then western influence so that comes with night clubs and fancy cars as one might expect. Another thing to point out is that this movie was not blown out of proportions. This was about a guy trying to do what he thinks is the right thing. I actually miss that. In Hollywood storyline is always side tracked by love interests and other irrelevant topics.

If you can live with the fact that this movie is in Russian and was filmed for Russians and appreciate it in that context then you will enjoy this movie quite a bit.

Surprisingly acceptable

[erkur · 7/10 · 8 September 2012]

This movie was kinda refreshingly good. Just don't consider it as one of Vinnie Jones movies, he was along for the ride here. It's more in line with Bourne and new James Bond movies.

The premise is quite simple, a man has been killed and probably nothing would've happened, but his brother turned out to be a nearly unstoppable highly skilled military trained close-combat master. If you are an action-thriller fan, you'll probably guess how a plot like this might develop. The upside here if fight choreography, very down to earth and visible. The second story line is about an operative responsible for handling this case, which proved to be much more than a regular one.

Let me stress it again, not your typical Vinnie Jones movie at all!

From the land of Borat

[LOL101LOL · 1/10 · 3 September 2017]

(This review was deleted by IMDb based on an abuse report filed by another user) Again I really question the rating of this on IMDb! out of 107 voters, 28 gave it a 10! I am over IMDb, I review films on here as to give my spin on either a good or bad film, but as soon as I point out the truth about something really really awful, my review gets deleted! No bad words are ever used! and clearly no IMDb rules are ever broken, and I don't even get notified of a deletion on here, have the courtesy IMDb to let me know why you delete a review, or does IMDb don't care about us movie watchers? or is IMDb there to protect film makers from criticism? And on this horrible excuse of a film, don't waste your time! it is awful! 1 out of 10

well thought out action movie

[brulenewhall · 10/10 · 8 September 2012]

I watched this film not really expecting much, I got far more than I hoped for. firstly a couple of things you should know:

1) Vinnie Jones only does a cameo role, but thats a good thing in my opinion.

2) This film is from Kazahkstan, I assume the actors are also. I like world cinema, again no bad thing.

For me this film was a real discovery, the plot was well thought out and fairly easy to follow. There were enough twists for it to stay interesting throughout. Fight scenes were good and kept realistic. The dialogue was good, characters engaging and the cinematography looked gritty (I'm no expert but I know when something looks crap). I would actually consider visiting Kazahkstan off the back of watching this movie, it looked like a cool place.

Heartily recommend The Liquidator, very good action movie, better than a lot of stuff coming out of the UK and the states. I really enjoyed it.

I'm didn't know Jason Bourne had a brother..

[ronjones515 · 10/10 · 25 June 2012]

As a HUGE fan of the Bourne Trilogy, I have yet to find a good substitute. After watching The Liquidator, I can honestly say this movie has the same intense hand-to-hand action, explosive demolitions, twisting plot line and top-notch actors.

The quick motion camera action was terrific and flowed very well. Whoever is responsible for the close-quarters combat choreography did a great job too. It was believable, fast-paced and unpredictable. I would have liked to have seen a larger variety of weapons utilized.

Loved the ending, certainly didn't see it coming. Nice work to all involved. I'll definitely be watching this movie again and recommending to all my friends.

The Orange Jeep Dad

Glad they use Vinnie in a Cameo for marketing. Surprisingly good.

[ips138 · 8/10 · 7 November 2014]

So... like most people started watching this because of Vinnie in the front cover. Well.. there is a 60 seconds Vinnie Cameo. Vinnie at no point features holding onto a shotgun. They used it as a marketing strategy to get you and me to see it. And I'm glad because the movie is very good (where most in the genre just don't cut it these days). Decent acting. It's the old story you hurt my family, I hurt you more. But interesting with morals and a twist within the story. I believe anyone could understand the main character's reasons. The movie goes from the revenge plot to a... liquidator plot. Solving nasties in the business. Enjoyed it.

It's not an American movie!

[iammelee · 9/10 · 5 March 2019]

You can't look at this film the same way an American would make an action film. The differences are subtle, but definitely there. I enjoyed this film. I came across it while looking for Russian language movies so I could practice my fading understanding of the language. The shaky camera work was a bit annoying which dropped a star for me, but all the rest kept me hooked. The story line, the characterization, the acting, the gritty settings, especially the end (I won't tell) made me want a sequel. As for Vinny Jones, he's just icing on the cake - but the cake was great.