Film Review: A Walk Among The Tombstones

A Walk Among The Tombstones

A heavily-hyphenated-review

Admittedly, I was less than excited about this one. It's fair to say that this was only made on the back of the success of Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) and its sequels; a producer hoping that the very idea of Liam Neeson as a retired dangerous-man-of-some-type running about with a gun and distributing righteous vengeance to deserving bad guys would be enough to entice the same audience. See Non Stop, Unknown or Run All Night for further evidence. Well, I sincerely hope that people hoping for Taken 4: The Piss, were left disappointed because this was not the film the posters pitched.

Don't get me wrong, this was an interesting film, containing some good moments and a decent central thread: two psychos kidnap and murder the relatives of drug dealers, knowing they can't call the cops. They try a bit of extortion, but are really just sick bastards intent on rape and murder. Retired badge Liam Neeson investigates, prick-teasing us into thinking that he's going to dish out some torture a-la Taken. He doesn't. What he does do is investigate the shit out of the case through grim New York locations. This part of the film is good, with Neeson convincing as the seen-it-all-before detective. Director Scott Frank creates some effective mood, using non-Manhattan New York locations in almost French Connection-like states of decay.

Neeson's character is good enough without being particularly memorable. His frankly ridiculous name, Matthew Scudder, escaped my memory almost instantly, leaving me to refer to him as 'Liam Neeson's character' throughout. He's a dedicated and moral man, one that we can get behind, but I got the impression that the filmmakers were relying on Neeson's current 'hard man' reputation rather than the script to generate dramatic tension. Scudder is good at what he does but will he throwdown with a goon? Will he kick and ass or two? Well, no, this is not that film and its much better than Taken for it. What it's less effective at is building Scudder's (seriously, guys?) backstory. An opening shootout which feels tacked on, is followed by some by-the-numbers personal tragedy and a barely developed alcoholism sub plot. I was, however, grateful that they didn't develop his relationship with homeless try-hard TJ (Brian Bradley) into a full-on sidekick thing. For the most part, this works nicely but the less said about a scene where Scudder tries to convince TJ that owning a gun is a bad idea the better. So cheesy you could top a pizza with it.

A Walk Among The Tombstones delivers some (pleasingly) unpleasant moments. The kidnappers' deeds are genuinely horrible, the film again playing on our knowledge of Neeson's recent work to make us want him to break out the jump leads and go to town on them. However.. this is not that film. Tombstones wins when it tries to find its own feet: Neeson stalking dingy cafes, graveyards and deserted apartment blocks for information. It's less successful when it reverts to type. Scudder is almost inevitably put in phone contact with bad guys (who are a more threatening cover version of the kidnappers from Fargo, underdeveloped and by-the-numbers: one is a too clean-looking Dexter-alike, and the other has a goatee), resulting in gravelly exchanges of threats. Again, I've seen Neeson do this before (not as well as he does it here, as it happens) and for me this was more desperate coattail-riding than it was tension building.

It also throws in a post-climax set piece, which is supposed to be tense but by this time the main plot is pretty much resolved and we care so little about the characters involved that the outcome barely matters. In the previous scene, Scudder informs kidnapper Ray (David Harbour) that he doesn't really care if he dies, so why the hell would we care? It ends in a downbeat fashion but establishes enough of a relationship between Scudder and TJ that, if I were a more cynical man, I would swear was angling for a mismatched buddy-cop sequel. (A Walk Among The 2mbstones anyone?) Sorry guys, but this is not that film.

Overall it has its moments, it has its awful moments and it has its moments where you just want to roll your eyes and wish you'd never seen Taken (last mention, I promise). For a better version of the retired-hard-man-solves-crimes-in-his-spare-time sub-genre, I would recommend The Equalizer (Antoine Fuqua, 2014) or even Jack Reacher (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). For me, A Walk Among The Tombstones does exactly what the title suggests: it's impressively gloomy, but unlikely to raise your heart rate and comes with an unfortunate sense of inevitability.