Review of Run All Night (2015) by Lane Z — 02 Dec 2015

Liam Neeson is creeping into my "All-Time Movies Reviewed" list with how many I seem to review a year, which is incredible for an actor his age doing so many action movies. While you have to go all the way back to Taken to mark the starting point of this explosion, the common theme running through all of his films is how can we see more of Neeson kick butt and take names?

Run All Night offers a smaller sample size of this noted butt kicking we are used to seeing, but with all the oddly precise kills and somewhat unrealistic standoffs, the film suffers mostly from a plot that's tough to get behind.

Most of the details lie in exposition between Neeson's voice overs and Ed Harris' dialogue, and while these are two of the finest actors of their age, the better angle to take would have been to show rather than tell. We get the smallest of flashbacks to the time period most viewers are probably wishing this film had taken place.

The premise is simple and Irish-gangster enough about two old friends who started from the bottom with nothing and one ended up the enforcer (Neeson) of the leader (Helms). The problem is, the aftermath of their long and brutal careers isn't much to gawk at. Harris' kid is a loose cannon while Neeson's son keeps his distance from the family genes as much as possible. It's a family squabble with no anchor to show why or make sense of.

But as always, the action is fierce and fiery (literally). As I mentioned above, the gun-play and hand-to-hand combat is pretty precise for characters who come off more as brutes and gangsters, but the flair is easy to look past when you consider who is on screen doing it.

Neeson reteamed with Jaume Collet-Serra (who he did Unknown with). It isn't necessarily a match made in heaven, but Neeson has reached a status of churning out these movies that place him in a category worth watching no matter what is thrown at you.