Liam Neeson’s recent fare falls under two categories: thriller or revenge flick. A Walk Among the Tombstones is being cast as a revenge flick, but it firmly falls in the thriller category. The adaptation of Lawrence Block’s novel is a bleak noir, where bad guys are 100% evil and Neeson’s hero never feels like one. Writer/Director Scott Frank establishes a despondent dark mood very effectively, but never quite maintains enough momentum to drive A Walk Among the Tombstones to a satisfying conclusion.
Matt Scudder (Neeson) is a former police investigator who retired due to a tragic sting operation. He quit drinking on that horrid day and now regularly attends AA meetings. He meets a man at a meeting one day who takes Matt to Kenny Kristo (Dan Stevens), a drug dealer. Kenny’s wife was captured and murdered by two men (David Harbour and Adam David Thompson) who also got 6 figures from Kenny as a bribe. Kenny hires Matt to track down his wife’s killers, forcing Matt to come to terms with his past and the evil he has to deal with in the present.
A Walk Among the Tombstones is one of the bleakest pictures I have seen in a long time. The movie is set around Y2K, giving the movie a sense of unease from the start. A Walk Among the Tombstones then showcases the underbelly of society, and how the paranoia comes from the rottenness within. The movie is shot is seedy New York City, using empty lots, cemeteries, libraries and opulent expansive gothic residences. Even the “happier” flashbacks are shot in shades of grey. Writer/Director Frank slows down intense sequences so we can see how much anguish and dismay reside in this place at this time. Also, the villains are of the old variety: wicked and evil to the core. Movies now attempt to humanize and justify what makes people tick, but A Walk Among the Tombstones implies that this world is just a sick place filled with sicker people. A desolate message, but a strong base to lay the foundation of a scary intense thriller. No one feels safe.
I’m guessing this movie did not test screen well due to the dark material, so some elements of badass Taken Liam Neeson films use their special set of skills to make their way into the film. Some of the action scenes fit in better, the best involving a door with a small window and a potential fight on the top of a building. Character building subplots stand out like broken thumbs. A false ringing relationship with the NYPD detective and a younger gumshoe (Astro) and Scudder holding court on a phone call with a villain have been done better in other films and don’t match the tone of the movie. The studio clearly assumes the Taken audience will want to see this film, when in fact A Walk Among the Tombstones better matches arthouse fare.
Neeson, in addition to kicking butt, has always been good at carrying weight with his voice. A Walk Among the Tombstones uses this trait to great effect: Matt Scudder wears his loss all over his body and personality. Neeson gives Scudder a broken everyman quality, trying to make right over and over again. Dan Stevens and his pretty eyes hide a dark side very well as the drug dealer out for revenge. The standouts in Walk Among the Tombstones are David Arbour, Adam David Thompson, and Olafur Darri Olafsson, who play wicked, twisted and evil as a channeled disquiet instead of over the top scene chewing. I cringed several times watching their pleasure defrauding and hurting people, knowing this is what real monsters look like.
Y2K was a panic stricken time for people afraid of technology. A character in A Walk Among the Tombstones remarks that people can’t see that they don’t need to be afraid of Y2K because there is already so much fear in the world already. As an optimist, A Walk Among the Tombstones scares me more than most horror films by simply making you consider the world you live in is rotten to the core. I guess that means we need Liam Neeson to quickly become Batman and cleanse the world of its evil right? He’s even got a post-modern Robin who can help him with “computer stuff.”