The Casual Racism of Liam Neeson’s Revenge Parable
Sadly, he missed the most important moral of his own story.
Liam Neeson is in hot water on social media, and I, for one, thinks he deserves the scolding — and the scalding.
He turned on the faucet and opened the floodgates during an interview with the Independent in which he tried to explain the psychology behind his character’s quest for vigilante justice in the new film Cold Pursuit.
He recounted a tale of racism and revenge and his lessons learned. Apparently, though, he either slept through the class on racism or ignored it completely.
The dark chapter in his life began when he found out a friend of his had been raped.
“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” he said. “But my immediate reaction was … I asked, did she know who it was? No. What color were they? She said it was a black person.
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody — I’m ashamed to say that — and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could … kill him.”
Neeson said his thirst for white justice lasted “a week, maybe a week and a half.”
