3 stars

Many years back, I was living in Sydney when The Matrix first came out and saw the film on opening night at the Randwick Ritz cinema.

The film was, of course, a phenomenon and added a handful of catchphrases and karate moves to the pop culture zeitgeist.

In the audience opening night, however, there was a star on screen much more exciting to the audience than Keanu Reeves.

"Ooooh, that's George Street," people were shouting. "That's Martin Plaza! That's The Rocks!"

The usually blase Sydney filmgoing audience, already so used to seeing their Nicky Kidman up on screen, couldn't get enough of their home town in a major Hollywood production.

They were starstruck.

That's kinda how I felt sitting down to watch the new Liam Neeson film Blacklight, knowing that it was at least partly shot in my hometown of Canberra.

Canberrans see their hometown on the television every night, albeit usually just the big triangle flagpole of Parliament House.

But this time things are different.

This Canberra will be immediately recognisable to locals, but to outsiders, it is the "soap opera reaction" shot of locations.

In a soap opera, particularly at the end of a scene, as the camera focuses in close on whatever character has just had a bombshell dropped on them, you'll notice the performer actually has a neutral expression on their face - and it is us the viewer who projects our own emotions.

In this case, the architecturally uninspired cubist buildings around Glebe Park and Casino Canberra are that neutral face, anodyne enough to stand in for about two square miles of Washington DC, this particular film's setting.

While I've never been a fan of those buildings in real life, American director (and Ozark creator) Mark Williams and his team perform something of a logistics and editing miracle, turning about 200 metres of street into the setting of a miles-long car chase.

One of these cars is being driven by movie tough guy Liam Neeson, playing Travis Block, an off-the-books fixer for the head of the FBI (Aidan Quinn).

Block is on the trail of undercover FBI agent Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), a man whose time immersed in some shady black ops work has made him bitter towards his employers and wanting to turn whistleblower.

Dusty pulls Mira (Emmy Raver-Lampman) who specialises in social causes into his bean-spilling, which puts her in the line of fire for a second set of FBI fixers, and realising he may not be working for the good guys after all, Block finds himself defending Mira and his own family.

I love me a Liam Neeson film. I love his late career resurgence. I love his "special set of skills".

But there are no catchphrases for Neeson this time around.

No special skills, just overlong exposition-laden dialogue scenes in Nick May's screenplay, and it's a good two-thirds into the film before his character lets rip with the violent energy that is the hallmark of a Neeson film.

What I did like about May and Williams's approach to Neeson's character is a Macguyver-like inventiveness, the kind that might warrant further explorations on screen.

Taylor John Smith is a promising performer, Hemsworth-pretty and good here, while a number of Aussie names do fine work in smaller roles in this locally-shot US film, particularly crooner Tim Draxl as a newsroom editor and Yael Stone as an undercover FBI agent.

But most promising among the performers is the city in which it is shot, able to be elegantly lit and charming in one scene, rough and urban in the next.

The gold tiles of the Civic Square buildings shine, the Acton Underpass a suitable stand-in for any American roadway, the newly-completed buildings on London Circuit all big-city elegance.

May other international productions see their ubiquity, and recognise the local filmmaking talent and their own special set of skills.

MORE ON BLACKLIGHT IN CANBERRA: