What better St. Patrick’s Day present than watching an Irish badass with a drinking problem navigate the mob underworld? Run All Night is another worthy entry into the Liam Neeson: Action Hero resume. Neeson makes threatening phone calls, beats up men half his age, challenges Ed Harris to a battle of wills, and tries to reconnect with his estranged son: IN ONE NIGHT. I guess that’s just the Luck O the Irish.
Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) is an aging hitman for local kingpin Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Due to an unfortunate string of events, their sons, Mike Conlon (Joel Kinnaman) and Danny Maguire (Boyd Holbrook) become involved in a terrible situation, forcing Jimmy to intervene. This infuriates Shawn, who comes down on Jimmy and Mike with the wrath of the underworld of New York. Jimmy stays around to protect Mike, but Mike’s wounds about their past make the reunion extremely hostile.
Direction gives Run All Night lots of juice. Director Jarume Collet-Serra uses fast paced tracking shots from NYC location to NYC location, which do two things: inject kinetics to make the story feel alive and give some sense of the size of the nighttime travel of the participants. These jumps feel almost like two cars destined for a head on collision. There is a well shot car chase and solid search through an apartment complex. The editing actually adds some franticism to the movie since they are used sparingly with solid effect. Neeson has teamed with Serra twice before, reteaming probably because the director knows how to make Neeson look great doing what people want him to do.
Movies like Run All Night can take off or fall apart when the action stops. Credit the writers also for quickly setting up the backstory and stakes in the first 30 minutes. They make each of the main relationships very complicated with very little time. Jimmy and Shawn are actually friends who lived through some awful times; we get to watch Shawn make noble decisions instead of taking a quick buck, and watch both men get hurt to their core by the issues with their children. The Jimmy/Mike relationship is even better. Even though Mike knows he needs Jimmy’s ruthlessness, his wounds are so deep he exhausts all other options first. Jimmy doesn’t even beg his son to be a part of his life, he just wants him to understand.
You’ll hear many people mention how great it is to watch the “Liam Neeson kills people movie,” but not enough credit goes to the man for making each of his characters unique. Neeson gives Jimmy a more haunted backstory than Walk Among the Tombstones, with the killer instinct of Brian Mills. Ed Harris shows off how he can be a force to be reckoned with and human at the same time. The tensest scenes are when Neeson and Harris get to threaten each other. Vincent D’Onofrio doesn’t get enough to do, but his presence is felt. Joel Kinnaman and Boyd Holbrook are fine, but requisitely sidelined for the heavy hitters. Genesis Rodriguez and Common are wasted in this film, along with a pointless plot device cameo I won’t reveal.
Contrivances aside, Run All Night will give you what you want. If you like Liam Neeson improvising a killing spree and making threats, then this film is perfect for you. It’s also another Neeson/Serra collaboration, so there will be at least one slow motion perfect hero moment that will jack you up and make you want to run all night.