Nick Nolte

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: Mulholland Falls

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Mulholland Falls has one of the greatest casts from the 90’s, and all neo-noir favorites.  We got Nick Nolte at the height of his cool, Melanie Griffith as the clueless wife, Jennifer Connelly who just looks like she was made to play the femme fatale in the 1950’s, Chazz Palminteri who fits in the 1950’s just as well as anybody, and what kind of neo-noir film made in the 1990’s would be complete without Michael Madsen.  The stars go on and on including John Malkovich playing the focus of our heroes investigation and Andrew McCarthy as the openly gay photographer that may have more on his film then he wanted. The story comes from Peter Dexter who has written some well received crime novels and has one the National Book Award.  This movie goes back to one of the greatest noir stomping grounds ever,1950’s Los Angles.  We get gangsters, a murder mystery, adult movies(back when they where highly illegal) and powerful men that think they can get away with anything. This movie definitely got it’s inspiration from the “Hat Squad,” a team of detectives that were given free rein to do what they needed to keep the Mafia out of L.A..  We see the “Hat Squad” again, in 2013’s Gangster Squad and TNT’s Mob City.  Maybe it was a little bit of a let down, with a cast like this we were expecting something similar to what we got the next year with L.A. Confidential(we will definitely be looking at this amazing film in a future post) but it’s not fair to compare these two films.  Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5 stars out of 4, so he saw this as a good film that could have been great.  This is a fun neo-noir to watch if you haven’t seen it yet or would like to give it another chance I would like to here your opinion.