Run All Night
A decent-quality addition to Liam Neeson’s actioners.
Nightly blue and orange, rendered in a gritty movie-cliché tradition, were the colors of choice in this largely nocturnal flick. The cinematography was indecorously agitated, with some fluid CGI work to localize the action — the virtual camera soaring from the street level to the almost-satellite view. Not that such shots were needed, thrilling, or introduced clarity — but nevertheless they set this movie’s style apart from countless B-movies about the same subject matter. The film started with a dramatic dying scene from the end of the movie, filmed in an unaesthetic slow-motion and sound-tracked to a cheesy voice-over of a regretful Liam Neeson. When the scene was finally revisited, that voice-over was not used again, which was appreciable.
This is the third time Liam Neeson worked with director Jaume Collet-Sera (earlier — Unknown, Non-Stop); in all their collaborations, he plays the same person. So he put on his usual haggard persona with a particular set of skills, who, despite all the kills he accumulates and the shady backstory behind him, is essentially a good guy. Even after showing up drunk as a Santa Claus at a Christmas party. His relationship with a main villain (Ed Harris) was pleasingly complex — a frenemic dynamic of sorts. There was a relishable, plain directness to the scenes of him phone calling to announce the death of Harris’ son (handily portrayed as a pathetic scum by Boyd Holbrook — an actor whose specialty is people unworthy of living), and later when meeting the boss in a restaurant to plead for Joel Kinnaman’s life (and being refused to his face). The end of their (hinted at) lifelong relationship was hardboiled —multiple shots in the back, amid an abandoned railway track .
A coarse, blunt, dinosaur-like role by Ed Harris. His mob was a non-glamorous affair, made of the usual bunch of ineffectual middle-aged fatties in leather jackets, killed with great ease by the protagonist. A non-apologetically campy figure of a hired assassin (Common), shooting futuristic laser beams from his weapons and flashing ridiculous mannerisms throughout (overly upright posture; elaborate technique of gun-reloading in the woods, involving legs; his tight palto and a briefcase the stuff of fairytales). A nice brief turn by a bathrobed and bearded Nick Nolte. A lean, obscenely moral and principled, ever-resentful role by Joel Kinnaman. A black hoodie and a constant scowl were the most memorable about this secondary character. Comedic the way he cruelly treated Neeson, not allowing him to enter the house or be introduced to his family. Kinnaman’s filmic wife (Genesis Rodriguez) was there just to worry, take care of kids and sit around the house. The idea of letting the black kid (Aubrey Joseph) play in the limo of gangster types was among the most ridiculous. As was a plan to visit the block where this black kid lived, bringing police, a hitman, shoot-outs and the following explosions, to his door.
Violence was untamed (hand-to-hand combats), though not graphic. People died easily, but for some cause (family protection, of course), not just entertainment. The film dealt with redemption, and Neeson’s attempts to shield a grown and posturally imposing guy like Kinnaman from killing anyone was refreshing; it cast the Swedish actor in a non-heroic, passive light, confining the character to the un-cinematic idea of violence-condemnation.
