"Run All Night" Feels Awfully Familiar

Run All Night (2015)

Rated R

Starring Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Boyd Holbrook, Vincent D'Onofrio

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

The Story:

Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) has a choice to make tonight. His son, Mike (Kinnaman) was about to be killed by Danny Maguire (Holbrook) so Conlon shot him and killed him. The problem? Maguire's dad, Shawn (Harris) is the mob boss that Jimmy works for. Shawn is now going to kill Mike first, and then Jimmy unless Jimmy can save them both and kill all of Maguire's men, and possibly Maguire himself, first.

It's going to be a long night!

And at almost 2 hours, it really is quite a long night.

The latest in the string of get Liam Neeson to play his Taken role and shoot the bad guys while escaping.

This one falls squarely between Non-Stop and A Walk Among the Tombstone, and behind Taken.

The movie crackles with Neeson or Harris, sadly the two barely share any screen time together, and again, after 90 minutes of watching Neeson dispatch anyone and everyone, the movie plays like a deja vu film reel versus something new and exciting.

Even D'Onofrio is mostly wasted as the cop who wants to arrest Jimmy, and has been trying for years but can never pin anything on him. He spends what little screen time he has 5 steps behind the action.

Pity.

 Final Grade: C- range.

Never Take "A Walk Among The Tombstones" With Liam Neeson.

A Walk Among The Tombstones (2014)

Rated R

Starring Liam Neeson, Maurice Compte, David Harbour

Directed by Scott Frank

The Story:

Matt Scudder (Neeson) is a former cop turned private investigator after a tragic accident in his career. He is approached to take a case to find the men who murdered the wife of a drug dealer after taking her ransom. He passes, but when he learns that the man paid the ransom, and that they had already killed his wife, he begins to piece together that this is the M.O. in some other cases, and he realizes that if he wants to save the life of the next victim, he better spring into action.

If you want a man with a certain skill set to find and kill people, you hire Liam Neeson and let him do his job.

That is, after all, what he does pretty much since his role in Taken.

However, if it's not broken, and the audiences want to buy tickets for it, ride that horse until it won't go anymore!

At this point, you know how the story will play out, and again, that's fine for what it is.

Nothing awful.

Nothing spectacular.

You've seen it all before but Neeson hasn't worn out his welcome...

Yet.

I give this a C+