Director: Scott Frank
Starring: Liam Neeson, Brian 'Astro' Bradley, Dan Stevens
4 stars
A Walk Among the Tombstones is the latest instalment in Liam Neeson's ongoing conversion to bona fide action hero. It is adapted from Lawrence Block's 1992 novel of the same name, the 10th book in his 18-strong series featuring the unconventional New York private investigator Matt Scudder.
A Neeson film is usually a fairly safe bet. The actor may not be held in quite the same esteem as the likes of Al Pacino or Kevin Spacey, but with multiple award nominations for movies such as Schindler's List and Michael Collins, his acting talent is not in doubt.
The evidence would also suggest that Neeson (or his agent) has an eye for a decent script and although he may not have quite maintained the quality of his 1990s heyday, it's rare that he appears in a terrible film. (Clash of the Titans is the exception that proves the rule here. Star Wars purists might point to Episode I: The Phantom Menace, but what sensible actor wouldn't take a role in a movie where he gets a lightsaber?)
True to form, Neeson’s latest is an extremely competent thriller that has enough originality to set it apart from the crowd.
Neeson plays Scudder, an alcoholic former cop with a bagful of issues to resolve who now works, unlicensed, as a private investigator (“Sometimes I do favours for people and they give me gifts”).
On learning that a drug dealer’s wife has been kidnapped and brutally murdered, Scudder is initially loath to help due to his would-be client’s chosen profession. When the client (Dan Stevens) revisits Scudder to beg for his help, leaving him with a tape the kidnapper made of the horrific ordeal his wife went through, however, Scudder relents. He becomes even more committed to finding the culprits when he learns that this isn’t the first time they have engaged in such acts and it probably won’t be the last.
I know what you're thinking – Liam Neeson, kidnapped women, relentlessly hunting down the bad guys. Yes, there are similarities to Taken – he even gets a bit annoyed on the phone at one point – and there's a hint of The Equalizer (the 1980s television show starring Edward Woodward, which is getting a big-screen reboot soon with Denzel Washington in the lead role) in there for good measure.
This film is, however, vastly different from the Taken franchise.
Rather than Taken's all-guns-blazing, wall-to-wall action, here we find a much darker, slower, almost film-noir feel, reminiscent of the Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe novels that Scudder's grudgingly acquired sidekick – the wisecracking, homeless, teenage would-be detective TJ (Astro) – reads while escaping the rain in the public library.
The film is set in 1999 and there is also an ongoing nod to the widespread paranoia about a Y2K meltdown that adds to the general feeling of tension. That the Y2K hints never actually lead to anything shows, according to the director Scott Frank, that “everyone was afraid of the wrong thing”. Whether his implication is that we should, in fact, all have been afraid of psychopathic kidnappers with a very twisted idea of bedside manners is unclear.
As the film nears its conclusion, the measured pace and brooding sense of foreboding that had coloured the previous 90 minutes or so begins to pick up dramatically, building to a frenzied, almost horror-movie tempo and an edge-of-the-seat climax as we learn just how bad these particular baddies are.
The film won't be to everyone's taste. On the one hand it's more thoughtful and on the other more gruesome than typical modern-day Bourne-type action fare. My female viewing companion detected a note of misogyny – a view that was apparently shared by several audience members at the movie's test screenings in the United States, where men rated it much more highly than women.
It worked fine for me though, and while it is unlikely to see Neeson return to the Oscars shortlist for this effort, it’ll definitely keep you interested for its entire, almost-two-hour running time.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
