Movie Review - Run All Night

Run All Night ** (out of 5) (R) Liam Neeson has become a pretty reliable action hero, with a batch of solid genre hits, including Non-Stop, The Unknown, and the Taken series. The first two were also directed by Jaume Collett-Serra, making this collaboration even more disappointing. The premise should have worked beautifully, with Neeson first appearing as the drunken, depressed “designated hitter” for his childhood pal and mob boss, Ed Harris. One fateful night, Harris’ scumbag son (Boyd Holbrook) kills a few rivals and cops. Neeson’s good-guy son (Joel Kinnamon)has the bad luck of seeing it happen, followed by the worse luck of Neeson having to kill Holbrook to protect his own progeny, even though the kid has hated his dad and that whole way of life for years. The Code obligates Harris to whack Neeson’s whole family to preserve the pecking order. Neeson and Kinnamon spend this long night trying to save themselves and the son’s family from Harris’ minions, plus the city’s entire police force that’s bought the frame-up of the Neeson clan Harris arranged.

Those stars and this set-up should have made another success. Blame the director. The action sequences are undermined by poor lighting and choppy edits. The plot meanders with too much chatter and not enough splatter. A couple of the Harris-Neeson confrontations live up to expectations, but they keep on yammering beyond the point of effectiveness. The climactic scene, if anything, undermines whatever empathy and grudging respect for the two leads that they’ve just spent nearly two hours struggling to establish. The result is that the coolest aspect of the film just might be seeing rapper Common stray so far from his image as one of Harris’ toughest henchpersons. Neat stretch, but not enough reason to buy the ticket. (3/13/15)