'Run All Night' - Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Liam Neeson is a drunk, wayward father living alone after ruining a connection with his family when an unexpected event brings his dark past back to haunt him. As the plot develops, Neeson’s character must lay his ghosts to rest, re-connect with his children and solve a lot of problems by shooting people. No, it isn’t Taken. Nor the sequels, A Walk Among the Tombstones, or indeed Non-Stop. This film is Run All Night, a New York-based thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra, whose previous credits involve the aforementioned airborne Neeson action flick.

Walking cliché Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) suddenly finds himself with one night to clear the name of his son, Michael (Joel Kinnaman) before both of them are found and killed by Jimmy’s mob boss Shawn (Ed Harris), who seeks revenge for the death of his own son. Neeson does his now standard grunts and grumbles, though a smattering of scenes between him and a very bored looking Harris splinter the monotony somewhat. Though we’ve left behind the nervous bravery of Schindler and the gentle tones of Qui-Gon Jinn, Run All Night proves that Neeson is serviceable as an action hero: he can still entertain, even if he cannot invigorate.

Joel Kinnaman – who handled himself with surprising and encouraging confidence in the remake of Robocop – appears oddly out of his depth here. His mad-eyes and fidgeting head give the impression of someone terrified not of imminent capture and death, but of an actor ill-prepared to mingle with Hollywood heavyweights such as Harris and Neeson. Uninterested and tired Harris may look, but at least he has the acting chops to get away with it.

Martin Ruhe’s run-of-the-mill cinematography is occasionally broken up by lavish aerial shots encapsulating the labyrinthine enormity of New York (including a measured amount of CGI trickery to leap from each location to the next), whilst a handful of nifty GoPro shots in amongst the action sequences give them unexpected vigour. The blundering boredom of Taken 3 is somewhat redeemed here; though the geriatric grittiness is past its prime and the formula has changed very little, there are thrills here aplenty.

★★★☆☆