Like his character in the now career-defining Taken movies, Liam Neeson has “a very particular set of skills” about which he seems increasingly unabashed. From the minute we hear the dying Liam declaring in voiceover that, “I’ve done terrible things…” we know we’re on home ground. Flash back to several hours earlier where we meet Neeson’s former hitman, Jimmy “the Gravedigger” Conlon, drunkenly wrestling with the ghosts of his violent past. Now, Jimmy’s estranged son Mike (Joel Kinnaman) has becomes the target of mob boss Shawn Maguire’s vengeful wrath.
Can Jimmy make things right with the family he betrayed by turning on the “family” that has become his life? At its most earnestly overwrought, this plays like a B-movie remake of Road to Perdition, with Ed Harris stepping into Paul Newman’s shoes in gravelly discussions about “the life”. For the most part, however, it’s a film about Neeson punching and shooting people while looking a bit bedraggled and a touch hungover. Director Jaume Collet-Serra had more fun with Neeson in Non-Stop, but at least this lays the dreary memory of the dreadful A Walk Among the Tombstones in the grave.
