Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones

Liam Neeson plays an ex-cop (and ex-alcoholic) who quit the force after an unfortunate shootout incident interrupted his midday drinking session. Now he’s an ‘unofficial’ private detective, who is asked by recovering junkie Boyd Holbrook (they meet at an AA meeting!) to meet with his drug trafficker brother (Dan Stevens). Stevens’ wife was kidnapped, and although he coughed up the money, his wife was brutally murdered anyway. He wants to know who these guys are so that he can have them properly dealt with. However, Neeson soon learns that this isn’t the first time these guys (whom we meet very early, played by David Harbour and Adam David Thompson) have done this. And they’re not likely to stop unless they are caught. Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley plays a street kid who sees himself as a young Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, and assists Neeson from time to time.

 

Written and directed by Scott Frank (whose writing credits include “Little Man Tate”, “Get Shorty”, and “Minority Report”), this 2014 film is less ‘latter-day Liam Neeson gets broody and shoots people full of holes’ movie, and more dour detective story crossed with a crime-thriller. So if you’re getting a bit tired of Neeson doing the troubled vigilante thing, you’ll get a bit of a difference with this one. Based on a novel by Lawrence Block (his novels have previously been turned into such terrible films as “Nightmare Honeymoon” and “8 Million Ways to Die”), Neeson is playing a reformed alcoholic, but not a complete wreck. It’s a good role for him (a character previously played by Jeff Bridges in the aforementioned “8 Million Ways to Die”), even if he’s not entirely convincing as an American. He gives a real weight to things, whilst a Malkovich-voiced David Harbour is particularly creepy as one of the villains. He ends up stealing the film, as these guys are truly repugnant perverts (Some have suggested that they are a gay couple, which might have turned things into regrettable homophobia, but honestly, it’s so vague that I’m gonna let it slide. I barely even noticed anything of that sort).

 

The film also looks fabulous, with gloomy, shadowy, almost Gothic scenery lensed by Mihai Malaimare Jr. (“Youth Without Youth”) looking like it’s right out of a horror film, almost. It’s a pretty good yarn, with Neeson once again giving things a bit of gravitas to lift it. If you’re worried about another Liam Neeson vigilante movie, don’t worry, this one’s more of a detective/killer-thriller flick if anything. Give it a go.

 

Rating: B-