A Walk Among the
Tombstones (Rated C)
Cast: Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, Brian "Astro" Bradley
Genre: Crime Thriller
Dwight's Rating: 3
Full of surprises! That's the best way to describe Liam Neeson's latest action thriller, "A Walk Among the Tombstones".
The first and probably biggest surprise is that this is not another take on "Taken". One could be forgiven for thinking this would be just like that excessively violent action movie and its sequel, especially after seeing the overwhelmingly dour looking previews and trailers. Star Liam Neeson is the common thread. But "Tombstones" is actually a rational, realistic and truly, enjoyable, edge-of-your-seat thriller. Surprise! Surprise!
And yet another surprise: Neeson has returned to the land of the living, and has found his human side. (Hopefully it's not just a brief stint.) Unlike many of his recent forays into action flicks, here he is not playing an invincible, soulless, robotic killing machine.
He plays a private investigator hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife. His character, Matt Scudder, actually has a sense of humor and a heart, and can and does get beat up. But he is certainly no push over. He's as tough as the tough guys Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson played in crime thrillers from the 1970s and 80s. The whole film actually has a retro/nostalgic feel to it. It happens to be set in the 1990s - mostly 1999 - when Y2K paranoia was rampant. (Remember that?)
Speaking of the 90s, "Tombstones" also takes on airs of some of the now-classic thrillers and neo-noirs from that era. However, many of those, like "Pulp Fiction", "Seven", or "The Usual Suspects", were far more stylized and melodramatic, with extravagant orchestral film scores, bizarre camera angles, non-linear storylines or disjointed narratives, seemingly designed more to make stars out of the directors as much as anything else. "Tombstones" takes a far simpler approach. There is a fair amount of flashback storytelling, but it is done nicely.
The subject material - drug traffickers and serial killers - is dark, but the dialogue manages to be surprisingly witty and even humorous. The best one-liners come from Neeson, and his Brian "Astro" Bradley, who plays his pint-sized assistant, T.J.
That said, portions are very graphic, gruesome, and cringe-inducing. But the violence doesn't seem gratuitous.
In this era filmed with CGI effects and non-stop action and noise, "A Walk Among the Tombstones" is surprisingly not afraid to allow moments of quiet conversation and reflection. Director/screen writer Scott Frank must be commended for this bold choice, and for presenting a surprising respite from the last few extremely lackluster choices at the box office.
o Dwight Strachan is the host/producer of " Morning Blend" on Guardian Radio. He is a television producer and writer, and an avid TV history and film buff. Email dwight@nasguard.com and follow him on twitter@morningblend969.
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