The Daily Stream: Redemption Proves Elusive In A Walk Among The Tombstones
Universal Pictures By Jeremy Mathai/Dec. 10, 2021 7:45 pm EST
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching, why it’s worth checking out, and where you can stream it.) The Movie: “A Walk Among the Tombstones”
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max The Pitch: How can you tell when a Liam Neeson movie is worth watching? For the most part, the answer is when it doesn’t exactly break out in theaters and isn’t done any favors by its marketing campaign. No, I won’t go so far as to say that “A Walk Among the Tombstones” ought to go right up there alongside the likes of the criminally underseen Martin Scorsese masterpiece “Silence” or Steve McQueen’s excellent “Widows,” but this 2014 neo-noir thriller at least comfortably fits within the general mold of a film like “The Grey,” where the promise of typical Neeson-style action somewhat overshadows the far more interesting ideas at play than viewers may have expected.
Why It’s Essential Viewing
Universal Pictures
Right off the bat, “A Walk Among the Tombstones” lets you know exactly the kind of movie it is. In the span of its opening five minutes, Liam Neeson’s alcoholic police detective drops a racial slur and an F-bomb, downs two shots of hard liquor with his morning coffee, and engages in a frenzied street shoot-out before the evocative opening credits sequence turns into a nightmarish tableau that lays bare the film’s nasty (and oftentimes slightly too cartoonish) villains, played by Adam David Thompson and a particularly chilling David Harbour. Needless to say, Matthew Scudder isn’t exactly a great guy, even eight years removed from the initial scene when he’s since retired from the NYPD, regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and taken up a shady side practice as an unlicensed private detective. When his latest client, wealthy drug trafficker Kenny Kristo (a reliably compelling and slightly sinister Dan Stevens), recruits his services and questions why he left the police force in the first place — “The corruption got to you, huh?” — Scudder matter-of-factly responds, “Not really. It would have been hard to support my family without it.”
With the exception of later revelations regarding that opening shootout (which is immediately given away in the official trailer, anyway), we receive very few details about Scudder’s background, his estranged family, or his time on the beat … something that most other action films probably would have felt compelled to shoehorn in, via clunky flashbacks or exposition. Though this minimalist choice by writer and director Scott Frank (“Minority Report,” “Logan,” “Godless,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) may alienate some viewers, it leaves us to learn as much as we can about this mysterious lead character through his day-to-day work, as he investigates the sick individuals who kidnapped Kristo’s wife, solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom money, and then murdered her anyway. The grisly details of the murder that soon turns into serial ones easily live up to the film’s neo-noir billing, with the foreboding score and deceptively impressive camerawork keeping us at an emotional distance from Scudder — until, that is, he compassionately helps out homeless orphan TJ (Brian “Astro” Bradley), who soon takes on a classic gunslinger/young sidekick dynamic to Neeson’s gritty, technology-averse loner.
The Daily Stream: Redemption Proves Elusive In A Walk Among The Tombstones
Universal Pictures
By Jeremy Mathai/Dec. 10, 2021 7:45 pm EST
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching, why it’s worth checking out, and where you can stream it.) The Movie: “A Walk Among the Tombstones”
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max The Pitch: How can you tell when a Liam Neeson movie is worth watching? For the most part, the answer is when it doesn’t exactly break out in theaters and isn’t done any favors by its marketing campaign. No, I won’t go so far as to say that “A Walk Among the Tombstones” ought to go right up there alongside the likes of the criminally underseen Martin Scorsese masterpiece “Silence” or Steve McQueen’s excellent “Widows,” but this 2014 neo-noir thriller at least comfortably fits within the general mold of a film like “The Grey,” where the promise of typical Neeson-style action somewhat overshadows the far more interesting ideas at play than viewers may have expected.
The Movie: “A Walk Among the Tombstones”
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max
The Pitch: How can you tell when a Liam Neeson movie is worth watching? For the most part, the answer is when it doesn’t exactly break out in theaters and isn’t done any favors by its marketing campaign. No, I won’t go so far as to say that “A Walk Among the Tombstones” ought to go right up there alongside the likes of the criminally underseen Martin Scorsese masterpiece “Silence” or Steve McQueen’s excellent “Widows,” but this 2014 neo-noir thriller at least comfortably fits within the general mold of a film like “The Grey,” where the promise of typical Neeson-style action somewhat overshadows the far more interesting ideas at play than viewers may have expected.
Why It’s Essential Viewing
Right off the bat, “A Walk Among the Tombstones” lets you know exactly the kind of movie it is. In the span of its opening five minutes, Liam Neeson’s alcoholic police detective drops a racial slur and an F-bomb, downs two shots of hard liquor with his morning coffee, and engages in a frenzied street shoot-out before the evocative opening credits sequence turns into a nightmarish tableau that lays bare the film’s nasty (and oftentimes slightly too cartoonish) villains, played by Adam David Thompson and a particularly chilling David Harbour. Needless to say, Matthew Scudder isn’t exactly a great guy, even eight years removed from the initial scene when he’s since retired from the NYPD, regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and taken up a shady side practice as an unlicensed private detective. When his latest client, wealthy drug trafficker Kenny Kristo (a reliably compelling and slightly sinister Dan Stevens), recruits his services and questions why he left the police force in the first place — “The corruption got to you, huh?” — Scudder matter-of-factly responds, “Not really. It would have been hard to support my family without it.”
With the exception of later revelations regarding that opening shootout (which is immediately given away in the official trailer, anyway), we receive very few details about Scudder’s background, his estranged family, or his time on the beat … something that most other action films probably would have felt compelled to shoehorn in, via clunky flashbacks or exposition. Though this minimalist choice by writer and director Scott Frank (“Minority Report,” “Logan,” “Godless,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) may alienate some viewers, it leaves us to learn as much as we can about this mysterious lead character through his day-to-day work, as he investigates the sick individuals who kidnapped Kristo’s wife, solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom money, and then murdered her anyway. The grisly details of the murder that soon turns into serial ones easily live up to the film’s neo-noir billing, with the foreboding score and deceptively impressive camerawork keeping us at an emotional distance from Scudder — until, that is, he compassionately helps out homeless orphan TJ (Brian “Astro” Bradley), who soon takes on a classic gunslinger/young sidekick dynamic to Neeson’s gritty, technology-averse loner.
With the exception of later revelations regarding that opening shootout (which is immediately given away in the official trailer, anyway), we receive very few details about Scudder’s background, his estranged family, or his time on the beat … something that most other action films probably would have felt compelled to shoehorn in, via clunky flashbacks or exposition. Though this minimalist choice by writer and director Scott Frank (“Minority Report,” “Logan,” “Godless,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) may alienate some viewers, it leaves us to learn as much as we can about this mysterious lead character through his day-to-day work, as he investigates the sick individuals who kidnapped Kristo’s wife, solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom money, and then murdered her anyway. The grisly details of the murder that soon turns into serial ones easily live up to the film’s neo-noir billing, with the foreboding score and deceptively impressive camerawork keeping us at an emotional distance from Scudder — until, that is, he compassionately helps out homeless orphan TJ (Brian “Astro” Bradley), who soon takes on a classic gunslinger/young sidekick dynamic to Neeson’s gritty, technology-averse loner.
