Liam Neeson in ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’

Greg Vellante

Since Taken hit theaters back in 2008, any action thriller starring bad-ass Liam Neeson has officially become its own genre. As Taken was followed by Taken 2, the conspiracy thriller Unknown, the existential drama/thriller The Grey, and the airborne thrills of Non-Stop, Neeson has become this generation’s Charles Bronson.

The 62-year-old actor is indubitably the selling point for the majority of his films. Within just a few minutes into his new film A Walk Among the Tombstones, a bearded, long-haired Neeson is slowly walking, gun in hand, ready to take out his final victim. And the title card “Liam Neeson in…” gets its own screen time before the title. It’s an opening that’s extremely reminiscent of Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Everything in the opening moments of A Walk Among the Tombstones conveys what audiences can expect from Neeson these days: His intense look and attitude along with violence, deafening gunfire, and blood splatter on cracked windshields. The pulp and excess violence of Tombstones are all the more glorified with an R-rating. (With the exception of The Grey, most of the films in Neeson’s action renaissance have been sanitized with a PG-13 stamp.) Another story element Neeson fans will recognize is the element of surprise. After Tombstones’ opening scene, the violence isn’t as prominent, as this film isn’t wall-to-wall pursuits and pummeling of bad guys. Instead, Neeson slowly tracks his prey as the narrative escalates towards his deserved vengeance.

Unleashing his inner Philip Marlowe, Neeson plays private investigator Matt Scudder, the subject in a series of novels by Lawrence Block. This character was played once before by Jeff Bridges in the 1986 Hal Ashby film 8 Million Ways to Die. As a brilliant noir-fueled score sets the tone, Tombstones follows Scudder as he diligently questions leads about two shiver-inducing creeps who are kidnapping, sexually violating and murdering drug dealers’ wives.

Neeson has often played heavy drinkers, but Scudder is eight years sober, which creates an equally sober-minded and forward-thinking narrative. Tombstones relies on an archetypal detective formula that may prove wearisome if moviegoers are unfamiliar with the story beats. Meanwhile fans of the genre could be bored or nostalgically delighted. While the film doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it still provides a hearty meal. It’s a solid entry, despite having a silly, distracting 12-step program juxtaposed with a climactic graveyard set piece (an unfortunate, distracting flaw that instantly pulls you out of the film).

Directed with a great eye by Scott Frank (The Lookout), A Walk Among the Tombstones is an intriguing, tense drama with Neeson at his most somber. It lands near the top of Neeson’s recent body of work, just below The Grey. Both of these films understand the build that comes before violence, rather than showcasing violent sequences and choreographed fight scenes just for the sake of watching Neeson kick some ass. The vengeance that Neeson achieves in Tombstones feels incredibly validated, so much so that the audience in my theater cheered at the film’s end.

A Walk Among the Tombstones hit theaters on Sept. 19.