By Morris Dean
I was still awake this evening after my wife and I watched the conclusion of "Blue Lightning" from BBC Scotland's 2014 TV serial Shetland, so I said, "Want to start to watch this thriller with Liam Neeson?"
She was game, so I put the DVD in (from our public library). I didn't know until we got to the credits that Run All Night was released just this March (2015). The director, Jaume Collet-Serra, was born in Spain the same month 41 years earlier – the release could have been his birthday present. During the credits, I exclaimed to my wife, "Perfect!" She said, well, it maybe wasn't perfect. I said, well, it was damn good! She said, you did enjoy it. I said, I enjoyed the hell out of it!
Rather than tell you anything more about it now, since it's new enough that you may not have seen it yet, I'll give you a week to catch it, and I'll plan to say more next Sunday. The writing is superb, the story first-rate, the pacing fast but slow enough to develop real characters, and Nick Nolte is even in it – miraculously, he appeared seconds after my wife commented that Liam Neeson could act a drunk even better than Nick Nolte. In this film, Nolte plays the Neeson character's brother, whom his brother and his nephew visit in their flight to escape capture by the NYPD and death by the Neeson character's estranged life-long crime friend, played by Ed Harris.)
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| Fleeing father and son (played by Joel Kinnama, who is looking out the subway door) |
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
I'll have to see if I can find it on the web. New shows like that are up for awhile until they are taken down.
ReplyDeleteGOOD idea, Ed!
DeleteSounds like my kind of gruesome.
ReplyDeleteDean, I would like for one of my future reviewings to be watching it with you. I would enjoy your loving the story and its characters' development.
DeleteBig fan of Liam Neeson. Am aware of this film but have not seen it yet. How would you say it compares to his Taken series? I enjoyed all three, although not equally.
ReplyDeletePatrick, I think the Taken series is very good, but I judge that Run All Night is a significantly superior film. The Taken films are well written, paced, acted, etc., but Run All Night is relatively a "classic tragedy," involving as it does an old friendship, the relationship of each man with his own son, the fact that the sons know each other and their lives impinge fatally in present time, throwing the old friendship into irrevocable fall. Just a first-rate, thoughtful, highly entertaining film.
ReplyDelete