Liam Neeson

Review: Run All Night

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Run All Night is another neo-noir staring Liam Neeson, will this be as good as A Walk Among the Tombstones or has Liam Neeson run his course as the over the hill action star? This film was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra who also teamed up with Neeson for Unstoppable and Unknown. Neeson has an outstanding supporting cast with Joel Kinnaman, Common, Ed Harris, Bruce McGill, Genesis Rodriquez, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Nick Nolte in a small uncredited part. This has to be a great film, right?!?!

Neeson plays a burnt out thug, who is down on his luck. He is a close friend with Harris’ character, who is a mob boss. They both have sons and when one son sees the other committee a murder the adventure begins. Kinnaman plays Neeson’s son and the witness to the murder. He has a family with his wife played by Rodriquez and a job as a limo driver. He has estranged himself from his father and is living on the straight and narrow. When Neeson hears about the murder and his son being a witness he sets out to do whatever he can to keep him safe.

This all takes place over the course of one night as for some reason, if they make it to the morning all will be OK. The action is great and some of the scenes are entertaining and the acting is pretty good. This film is just missing something for me to call it a great film. There are worse ways to spend a lazy evening then watching this film, but I can’t call it a “must see” film. If you are a huge fan of Neeson you will enjoy this film. If you have not seen Neeson in a neo noir film but would like to try one, I would say skip this one and watch A Walk Among the Tombstones instead.

Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones

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A Walk Among the Tombstones is a Matthew Scudder movie from 2014.  Matthew Scudder is a character written by Lawrence Block that has been in one other movie and in 17 books.  This story comes from the 10th book in the series.  I’ve recently just read the first book in the series and reviewed it here:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/02/23/review-the-sins-of-the-fathers-by-lawrence-block/

Though I’ve only read one book and now seen this movie, I’m a big fan of Scudder and look forward to reading more of the books.  Liam Neeson plays Scudder, a recovering alcoholic, ex-police officer that isn’t a private detective, but does favors for people and for those favors, these people give Scudder gifts.

This film is written for the screen and directed by Scott Frank who also wrote and directed The Lookout.  He is also bringing another classic noir character to the screen soon, Hoke Mosely a character that has appeared in 5 books by Charles Willeford.  This story will be coming to the television screen instead of the big screen, but I still look forward to seeing it when it is released.  Frank has also written many other crime and neo-noir stories for the screen, he seems to have a good sense of taking a classic crime or noir novel and bringing it screen.

Some of the notable supporting cast is David Harbour, who often plays the creepy character, goes above and beyond in this film.  Dan Stevens plays a drug dealer/business type very well.  Stevens come onto my radar after his starring role in “The Guest.”  The Guest is a very fun movie that covers a lot of genres, if you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it as well.  Ólafur Darri Ólafsson also plays a pretty creepy role that is a very interesting character.

So the story for this movie is a fellow AA member’s brother needs Scudder’s help.  Scudder meets with him and quickly figures out that he is a drug dealer.  This dealer has had his wife kidnapped and killed, but because he is a drug dealer he can not ask for the police’s help.  He asks Scudder for help and soon Scudder takes on the case.  The story takes off from there.  This is not only a neo-noir film in story, but is very much filmed in a classic noir style as well.  I really enjoyed this story and the visuals of the film. I really hope this is a new franchise for Liam Neeson now that Taken has run its course.  I would really look forward to seeing more movies with him as Scudder.  If you’re a Lawrence Block fan, or a Liam Neeson fan, or just a fan of a hardboiled tone, you will like this film.