A Walk Among the Tombstones - A solid little mystery-thriller (not ‘Taken 4’ though)

Liam Neeson has enjoyed a renaissance lately, reinventing himself as an ‘elder statesman’ of action movies, what with the ‘Taken’ trilogy and ‘Non Stop.’ Therefore, I couldn’t help but go into ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’ thinking that it was going to be another ‘blast-a-thon’ of gunplay and high-octane action.  It wasn’t.

I even – briefly – read a post on the internet concerning the film.  It simply read ‘Totally dull.’ To be fair, I can see where they’re coming from.  If you go into this film expecting something like Taken then you’re going to be left sorely disappointed.  Luckily, when I watched it, I was obviously okay with something a little slower.

Liam Neeson plays... well, basically the same badass character he keeps playing lately – you don’t really need to know his name.  He could almost be the same guy in Taken.  But, anyway, he’s an ex cop turned private detective who’s hired to investigate the kidnap and murder of a drug dealer’s wife.  First of all there’s comparatively little action, despite quite an intense opening shootout, there’s not that much else to follow (besides the odd ‘roughing up’ of a few shady characters here and there.  The story is mainly about Neeson’s investigation, which he does with hunches and leads, rather than guns and fists. 

Normally, I say that characters work best when they interact with others around them.  Liam Neeson is definitely a ‘lone wolf’ here and I actually preferred him that way.  However, the film-makers decided to make him ‘play off’ a young homeless kid he sort of befriends along the way.  I felt that this was the one down point in the film.  It wasn’t the young actor’s fault.  He could definitely act, I just didn’t really believe a young homeless boy would be so into the things he was, i.e. health conscious and water-drinking to ‘flush out his system’ etc.  But he’s comparatively a minor part of the two-hour film.

So, if you’re in the mood for something a little slower than Neeson’s recent offerings then give it ago.  Just think ‘cops and robbers’ rather than all out action.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that