Liam Neeson has been on a box office roll in recent years, but not all of the parts he’s played have been worth remembering. While “Taken” and its sequel were popular films, both had glaring issues. Neeson then played the same grizzled, aging, tough guy character in “Unknown” and “Nonstop.” He’s had parts in other films, too, but none as good as John Ottway in “The Grey.” I still get chills thinking about that movie, and not because of its deep Alaskan setting; Neeson was fantastic.
When I saw the trailer for the crime thriller, “A Walk Among Tombstones,” I thought we were getting more of the Neeson we’d seen in “Taken” and its ilk. Fortunately, that’s not the case. “Tombstones” features Neeson’s best role, and best performance, since “The Grey.”
As a movie, “Tombstones” doesn’t scale the same heights as “The Grey,” so it doesn’t require as much from Neeson as the role of Ottway. But it’s a decent film that gave Neeson an opportunity to bring a complex, layered character to life.
When we meet Matthew Scudder, he’s a cop who’s about to have a very bad afternoon. After a tense conversation with his partner, during which we learn Scudder has his fingers in some unsavory pies, he goes to a bar to have a drink. When thugs shoot and kill the bartender in an attempted robbery, Scudder gives chase, killing two and injuring one of the culprits. Unfortunately, one of the bullets he fires takes a bad bounce and takes the life of a child.
Years later, Scudder is a private investigator who lives alone and attends AA meetings. Instead of opening up while taking his turn at the podium, he tells the same story over and over: “I stopped drinking because it wasn’t fun anymore.” The killing, the corruption, and perhaps the world in which he lives have turned Scudder into a closed book. Neeson, however, provides a window to the man’s soul, revealing all of his pain through his eyes.
I like how writer and director Scott Frank, working from a novel by Lawrence Black, brings out the humanity in Scudder: through a homeless African American boy who attaches himself to Scudder. Their paths cross many times, and they eventually develop a pseudo father-son relationship that benefits both of them. Not only is their relationship a welcome relief from the darkness that pervades the rest of the movie, Astro (the actor’s full name) gets the movie’s best lines and even a few laughs.
I was less drawn to the rest of the story, which was hewn from shopworn material. Eight years after the accidental shooting, a drug kingpin hires Scudder to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife. Scudder’s investigation leads him to a pair of serial killers who kidnap, torture, and mutilate female victims. The two men are so thoroughly cruel, one character describes them as not being human. This is made clear when they abduct the adolescent daughter of another drug lord and cut off her fingers.
Not only is Scudder’s investigation too “by the books” to stir up much interest, once the identities of the killers are revealed, the mystery surrounding them dissipates like a fine mist. Eventually, Frank reveals them to be little more than bumbling idiots. He does generate some suspense in the final scene, set in the house in which the killers live, but other than that, “Tombstones” loses much of its dramatic thrust after it removes the mask from the face of evil.
Still, there’s Neeson. He makes “Tombstones” worth watching. Scudder spends his days and nights walking among dead, which include not just the people he’s pursuing but also his clients, and burying what little life he has left in him beneath a steely exterior, where no drug dealer, serial killer, or graveyard posing as a city can grab it and steal it away. Neeson portrays this complex man as an only a truly great actor operating at the height of his craft can.
If only he’d do more roles like this. Alas, he’ll appear next in “Taken 3.”
Two-and-a-half stars out of four. Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.