A Walk Among The Tombstones

I didn't intend on seeing A Walk Among The Tombstones yesterday. I had been out the night before, I was a little hungover, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But there was a movie theater just around the corner from where I was staying and I didn't have anything else to do for the day, so I thought, why the hell not.

I'm really glad that I did.

I would say A Walk Among the Tombstones is your stereotypical Liam Neeson one man army movie like he's been doing ever since Taken. And in many ways it is, but in more ways, its really not.

Based off a novel by Lawerence Block, that I'm most definitely going to read very soon now, Liam Neeson plays Matt Scudder, an ex cop, and former alcoholic. Scudder is now an unlicensed private investigator who does a lot of his work off the books. Someone asks him for a favor, he does it, they give him gifts. Pretty simple.

But when a Drug dealer's wife is kidnapped and murdered, suddenly Neeson is thrown into an investigation of a series of murders all committed by two mysterious men in a van. This kidnapping and murder is not the first that has happened and it isn't the last.

All in all, A Walk Among the Tombstones is a very straight forward crime thriller. Now some people would call a lot of the movie cliche, I would call it traditional.

The movie isn't bigger than it needs to be, its just your run of the mill, almost noir feeling movie. No government conspiracy, not big cover ups, just some psychos committing murders and Liam Neeson with a shady past going to stop them.

What I realized when the movie was done was that I could count on my hand how many actual cops were in this movie. Maybe 5. Also its interesting that you think about it and the victims are either drug dealers or family of drug dealers.

Now this was not quite as dramatic as it sounds, mainly because they didn't look like drug dealers at all. There was a guy in a track suit that was Russian apparently, but put aside their past that is only said not shown, and these victims are just regular people who don't want to call the police.

The movie in a way reminded me of one of my favorite crime thrillers ever, Gone Baby Gone.

By god was that movie good. And the book, even better.

Maybe its just the fact that the main character in that movie is a private investigator and Liam Neeson is a private investigator in this movie, but I couldn't help but think of this movie. I think Gone Baby Gone is, in the bigger picture, a better movie, but A Walk Among The Tombstones definitely had a great edgy feeling to it that Gone Baby Gone did and it definitely kept me on my toes and guessing, just like Gone Baby Gone.

I'm definitely going to have to read the book and see how much different it is from the movie...

Also I need to re-read Gone Baby Gone and rewatch the movie so I can do a book/movie review.

God Damn that was a good movie.

But back to A Walk Among The Tombstones. Liam Neeson of course brings it. I wasn't quite sure if he was going for a New York accent... or an American accent at that, but the man is Irish, yes I can give him shit for not being able to lock down an American accent, but it wasn't that bad in the film. Also, its fucking Liam Neeson, who gives a shit. Its not gonna win him any awards, but the man is just fun on screen.

And make all the Taken jokes you want, Liam Neeson on a phone is probably the scariest thing you will ever hear. There's a great scene where he's taking with the kidnappers and suddenly you know its on. Its great, its wonderful, it makes me love Liam Neeson even more than I already did.

The man demands your attention and he gets it.

The other cast is pretty good. I would say the combo of the antagonists, Ray and his partner (don't really know the other guys name honestly) are pretty good crazy people. One is really quiet, the other just smiles and is creepy like that. Needless to say you don't want to meet these guys in a dark alley.

David Harbour plays Ray, he's that guy you have seen before in movies and TV but he never really has a big part.

See even now, I recognize the actor but I can't really place where I have seen him before. I guess he was in Quantum of Solace and a couple of other movies but I can't really place him.

And then there's the kid Liam Neeson meets.

Neeson (I'd call him Scudder but c'mon, its Liam Neeson) meets this homeless kid named TJ who wants to be a detective (played by Brian "Astro" Bradley)

Now my friends came out of the movie saying this kids acting was awful. I'm kind of lukewarm on the entire thing. I don't think he was bad, I definitely enjoyed him more than other kid roles I've seen in movies like this, but there wasn't really anything memorable about the part that made me say, Oh yeah Brian "Astro" Bradley is a kid I should be keeping my eye on. He's gonna make it.

Honestly, the kid was an X-Factor finalist... or something, he was on X-Factor. Maybe he's talented, maybe he's not, but there's a very good chance he'll end up not getting much work and floating into obscurity. And thats not really a bad thing, as long as he doesn't end up dead or anything like that, he'll be fine.

It just wasn't anything memorable.

And that's the case with a lot of this movie. The thing I like about this movie was how straight forward it was. It was a crime thriller, nothing else. There's mystery, there's conflict, there's investigation. The movie is full of tropes you've seen before. However, I think that's what I like about it.

Sure its not going to win any awards, maybe its been done before, but I hope its a straight forward enough crime thriller that if thats what I need, I can pop this in and get that crime thriller fix. I hope this movie doesn't fall into obscurity for me. I liked it a lot. Its worth a watch and hell I might even buy it when it comes out. We'll see.

But that's my thoughts on A Walk Among the Tombstones. Have you seen it? What did you think? Comment and Discuss Below.

I'll leave you with this. You knew it was coming, Here's the Taken Phone Speech. Its amazing, its great, its awesome. Enjoy!