Review of Run All Night (2015) by Neil N — 02 Mar 2015

I can't help but wonder how this movie would have turned out in another director's hands, because I think the foundation of the story is pretty strong. Aging small time mob hit man Neeson is staring mortality and a life of regrets in the face, and Ed Harris is the last friend he has left. It's a shame that Harris's idiot son offs a couple of shady business partners in sight of Neeson's estranged son. What follows could have been a really gripping thriller about two fathers each trying to do right by their boys. Maybe if someone like Martin Scorsese had directed this in 1977, it would have been fantastic. Instead, we have a movie that honestly doesn't know how to stick with a style. Every time the story threatened to draw me in, I'd get thrown back out by an editing style that could best be described as a cross between 1980's music video and cinematography by Google Earth. It's like the editor is terrified of using straight cuts and is determined to either wow us with computer generated zooms and spins or baffle us with random insert shots of the city at night which don't really serve to add to the atmosphere in any meaningful way.

It's not awful in the way that TAKEN 3 turned out, just frustrating. I can almost see how a compelling script got buried under a ton of visual nonsense.