It’s not just me, right?
I can’t be the only one who feels like we’ve all been here before. Liam Neeson isn’t just an actor anymore; he has
become a genre in and of himself. It
seems that every role he plays nowadays is as a flawed yet likeable patriarch
with superheroic gun skills who must either win back the affection of his
family and/or prove that he had a superior point of view that his family should
have listened to. These are
quintessential dad movies, targeted at the 40-60 year old male demographic to
provide them with assurances that they were successful parents while getting to
watch one of their contemporaries be more badass than any subsequent
generation. And Run All Night is no exception.
Neeson’s alias this time is Jimmy Conlon, a former hitman
for the local Irish mob who hung up his hat and wallowed in his inability to
connect with his estranged adult son, Mike, by becoming an alcoholic. His only friend is Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris),
the head of said mob, who repays years of service by supporting Jimmy through
this tough time in his life. Through an
unnecessarily convoluted chain of events, Shawn’s son threatens to kill Mike,
forcing Jimmy to kill Shawn’s son and put Jimmy and Mike on the top of Shawn’s
hit list. The two must spend the night
running from crooked cops and hired hitmen in order to save themselves and
protect Mike’s family.
The themes and motifs present in this film should not be
unfamiliar to anyone who has seen a Liam Neeson movie since 2008, and much like
the rest of that catalogue, the results are pretty standard. There’s not much one can say about an
adequately directed action film, as the formula has been down pat since at
least the 80s and it’s rather difficult to screw up too badly. Neeson and Harris do respectably well playing
begrudging adversaries, two men who really don’t want to fight one another, but
must betray years of friendship out of loyalty to their families. There’s a genuine sadness to be felt between
their characters that a lesser film would have played off as bitter rage.
However, the plotting of this film is unforgivably
complex. For as shallow and superfluous
as many of the film’s characters are, there certainly are a lot of interweaving
plot threads for what essentially amounts to a good-guy-versus-bad-guy
narrative. What should have been a
ninety minute film is stretched to two hours by the sheer amount of unnecessary
plotting, especially considering the driving moment of the plot doesn’t happen
until after twenty minutes of establishing scenes.
By comparison, John Wick had
an intricately established cast of characters, but each was unique and
interesting enough to be memorable, and the plot was simple enough that
exposition often wasn’t necessary. Run All Night, on the other hand, feels like it needs a flow chart to
keep track of all its dealings, but none of them actually matter in light of
the central conflict.
Still, despite all its flaws, I can’t really fault Run All Night for what it is. It’s a popcorn flick, plain and simple. Something to watch once, forget about
immediately after, and then watch again years later only to have it seem
vaguely familiar to you. It’s not a bad
film, nor is it an especially good one, but it’s entertaining enough to watch
through to the end, and that’s ultimately what films are here to do: entertain.
Do Liam Neeson films interest you at all? Or do they all melt together into a malaise
of guns and sternness? Leave your
thoughts in the comments below.
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