TOUGH AT THE TOP FOR NEESON
Action hero proves he still has what it takes in his latest role
Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra With: Liam Neeson, Genesis Rodriguez, Ed Harris Runtime: 114 minutes WHAT a wondrous thing is Liam Neeson’s growl. Perhaps only the Earth’s core, or a poem from Eric “Seagulls” Cantona, can rival it for depth. It is certainly the deepest aspect of Jaume Collet-Serra’s otherwise light on nuance, heavy on action, revenge thriller.
The director of Run All Night is Jaume Collet-Serra, the Spanish director whose English language film career began with Goal II: Living the Dream (starring that strangely underused actor David Beckham). Then came the deeply creepy Orphan and Unknown, the first of his collaborations with Neeson. Since that amnesiathemed thriller, Collet-Serra and Neeson have remembered each other’s contact details long enough to make Non-Stop and now Run All Night. Theirs is a marriage made in leather-jacketed, big gun heaven where men have to do what men have to do. In the case of Run All Night, that means protecting an estranged son from those who want him dead before dawn.
Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, a former hitman for gangster Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Jimmy was once a big name in New York, but these days he is drink-sodden and washed up, only good to do the bidding of Maguire’s son Danny, a young punk who is as bent as his old man but with half the brains.
Jimmy’s son, in contrast, long ago gave up on his old man and has taken the right road in life. Happily married and a father, Mike works long hours for low pay as a limo driver. As bad luck would have it, one of his jobs brings him into contact again with dad’s world in the shape of Danny. A right royal mess ensues and the dads are drawn in, guns drawn once more. “I’m coming after your son with everything I’ve got,” Shawn tells Jimmy. It’s going to be a long night, Jimmy advises the cops as they scramble to control the fallout from this clash of the ageing titans.
It is not easy being up all night when, as in the case of sixtysomethings Neeson and Harris, you are a couple of stops past the free bus pass stage of life. But the pair soon show themselves to have the right stuff still as they snarl and pace and otherwise lock antlers. Or in Jimmy’s case, tear around town becoming involved in high speed car chases and shootouts. Neeson’s transformation from soppy widower in Love Actually and firm but cuddly Aslan in the Narnia pictures to leather-jacketed ninja is now so complete one would probably fail to recognise him if he was not vowing revenge and wreaking havoc in some world capital or other.
All of which leaves Collet-Serra with a choice. Does he take a risk, or does he play up to Neeson’s box-office friendly persona as a man who makes Charles Bronson of Death Wish fame look like a Care Bear? Do we even need to ask? The film, after all, is called Run All Night, not Engage in Existential Angst All Night About the Morality of Killing. If anything, Collet-Serra makes it his mission to turn the testosterone dial up even further with a couple of off colour jokes about women and plenty of no holds barred violence. As for female characters, they are confined to wives and mothers whose job is to look worried and keep largely schtum.
There are some saving graces. Courtesy of some swooping aerial shots Collet-Serra manages to make New York, one of the world’s most filmed cities, look fresh again. The chase sequences, too, are choreographed cleverly. More importantly, he gives Joel Kinnaman, aka The Killing’s Stephen Holder, the chance to shine.
Wired, charismatic, smart, and no slouch in the action scenes, Kinnaman makes one forget the cliches and formulaic approach of the film and focus instead on a new star in the making. One hopes he is not too quick, though, to sign up to the leather-jacketed ranks of movie tough guys. As Neeson shows, there is no room at the top just yet.
"Collet-Serra makes it his mission to turn up testosterone dial with plenty of no holds barred violence