A promising commercial for a Liam Neeson action movie!
Earlier this year I went to see ‘Non-Stop’ in which Neeson plays Bill Marks, a former cop and alcoholic turned Federal Air Marshal who uncovers a plot to detonate a bomb that has been planted on his flight. As part of the plot, Marks is framed as the bomber but manages to save almost everyone on the plane despite the bomb going off in mid-air. It was an entertaining enough movie but no ‘Taken’, focusing too much on detective work and Marks’ shady past and not nearly enough action.
A couple of work emergencies had me putting in enough time during the week that I was able to take Friday afternoon off and go with Kathy to the afternoon matinee at the local movie theatre. $25.50 later we were armed with popcorn, soda, and two tickets which allowed us to take our place among the other 11 movie-goers.
The film starts in 1991 with a healthy dose of action. Neeson is a long-haired, bearded New York City detective who leaves his partner in their car to head into a bar for a couple of drinks. Two men walk in to the bar to rob it and shoot the bartender dead. Neeson chases the men into the street, shoots and kills one robber and then shoots the fleeing getaway driver dead while the second robber runs away. Neeson shoots the remaining crook in the leg and follows him as he limps to a secluded alley where he proceeds to shoots him dead. It was a fine start to an action movie.
The movie then flashes ahead to 1999 although the only way I would have known if I hadn’t been told was the billboards, bumper stickers, and signage urging people to be prepared for Y2K and the oversized computer monitors. We see a woman being fondled by two men and then shown the duct tape covering her mouth and we can safely assume she is the kidnap victim.
Meanwhile Neeson is in an AA meeting and introduced to us as retired detective Matt Scudder, who now has short hair and no beard and works as an unlicensed private investigator. Scudder recounts the tale of the shooting which seems to have been so traumatic that he not only quit the police force – he quit drinking. Once the AA meeting ends, Scudder goes to a local diner for a steak when he is joined by one of his AA cohorts who wants Scudder to meet with his brother Kenny Kristo because Kenny has a problem. Scudder meets with him and finds out Kristo’s wife had been kidnapped and killed after the ransom had been paid and that Kenny is a drug trafficker. Scudder turns down the $20,000 in cash to find the kidnapper/murderers but changes his mind after learning of the exceptionally grisly nature of the crime.
Scudder learns the names of one of the villains, discovers that they are serial killers, and even how they pick their victims but has no luck tracking them down until they kidnap the daughter of one of Kenny’s drug trafficking rivals. Scudder inserts himself into the negotiations as the point man and sets up the payoff in a cemetery for the first of two climactic scenes. After a shootout at the cemetery, Scudder and remaining members of his ‘team’ (I don’t want to give away too much) track the murderers to their hideout and the final climactic and grisly end (which is performed to the recitation of the AA 12 step creed).
If you look up the definition of 'action' in a dictionary you'll probably find these clips from the movie 'Taken'
Aside from Neeson’s workman like effort and Harbour’s professional performance I thought rest of the cast was nondescript at best although the stereotypical characters probably give them much to work with. The film was adapted from the 1992 novel by Lawrence Block which is one of many featuring the recovering alcoholic Scudder. I think the filmmakers tried too hard to integrate the AA meetings and 12 steps into the movie. While those characteristics are central to who Matt Scudder is as a fictional character in novels these traits have the luxury of being developed over thousands of pages in years of novels. The task of trying to make them the central theme of a two hour movie led to a disjointed and slow moving storyline in which any small amount of action was met by yet another AA meeting, lecture by Scudder to the youthful T.R., or some slow-moving detective work.
I can't fault 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' for not being as good as Taken when so few movies are but I can and will fault it for being slow moving with so little action. Even if I were to consider it a mystery movie the main characters are all pretty unlikeable - drug addicts or drug dealers or alcoholics or serial killers. The only characters I felt any sympathy for are T.J. (the homeless petty thief) and the kidnap victims (who aren't on screen very much). As much as I enjoyed the movie Taken and Neeson’s take no prisoner performance in it, I felt I got taken by ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’. This movie was advertised as an action movie but it was really a mystery movie and a slow moving one at that. I would have been better off keeping my $25 in my pocket and laying out 6 quarters at the Redbox in a few months. The movie grossed $13 million on it's opening weekend which is more than enough to keep Liam Neeson in starring roles considering its $48 million dollar budget but I won’t be watching any Liam Neeson ‘action’ movies in the theatres until I get one from Redbox and it so action-packed that I wish I had seen it in the theater.
2 comments:
Yeah I know that “A Walk Among the Tombstones” was a big hit of 2014 and it was listed in top 10 liam neeson movies list, actually the story of this film was quite unique and all the actors gave stunning performances.
It wasn't an awful movie but it only grossed 20 million in the US and it isn't in the top 60 Liam Neeson movies in the link you shared. Thanks for leaving a comment though!
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