The Beast (La Belva) (2020)

There are worse ways you can kill a hundred or so minutes of your life, and there are are enough entertaining minutes of carnage and mayhem in the mix here to make you justify the decision to watch it, but when all is said and done, this (essentially) Italian remake of Taken falls well short of Liam Neeson’s “particular set of skills.” My biggest problem is that our aged protagonist never actually crosses the line from man to beast, and instead his primary skill appears to be the ability to take a beating and somehow keep pressing on. In short, he may have kicked ass once upon a time, but those days have long since passed. The action not only lags in spots, but gets laughable in others, and the entirely predictable ending is just way too drawn out, to the point that you start thinking about what movie you’re going to fire up next to hopefully get the bland tastes out of your mouth.