Run All Night: Movie Review
Director Jaume Collet-Serra is the guy who helmed all the recent Liam Neeson action films that don’t have the word “Taken” in the title. 2011’s “Unknown”, 2014’s “Non-Stop” and now “Run All Night”. Although the Collet-Serra/ Neeson collaborations are a bit better than the popular “Taken” series, they are still not very good. Much like the previous films, this one gets more idiotic the further into the story it gets.
Brooklyn hitman Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) is not doing all that well. Haunted by his victims, Jimmy can only find solace at the bottom of a bottle. Jimmy is broke and alone. His estranged son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman) won’t have anything to do with him. The only person that cares about Jimmy is his lifelong best friend Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), who happens to be the mob boss that Jimmy worked for.
That lifelong friendship suddenly comes to an end when Jimmy kills Shawn’s son (Boyd Holbrook) in order to protect his own. Now Mike and Jimmy are on the run from Shawn’s crew even though the last thing Mike wants is to be around his father. When Shawn’s thugs can’t seem to take down the father and son, he brings in calculated hitman Andrew Price (Common) to bring things to a close.
Out of options, the only person Jimmy can trust is Detective Harding (Vincent D’Onofrio) who has been trying to take down the former hitman for nearly 30 years. Jimmy knows that Harding is the one cop that isn’t on the mob’s payroll.
“Run All Night” gets off to a pretty decent start and the idea of Neeson going up against Harris in a crime flick was an appealing one to me. Aside from a few good moments between the two veteran actors, “Run All Night” feels tired. We have seen Neeson play these kinds of parts way to often in recent years and even though he is good, it just becomes more of the same.
I am sure there are plenty of people out there who don’t feel the same way and will continue to enjoy these paint-by-number shoot-em-ups that Neeson continues to churn out. I just wish “Run All Night” eased up a bit more on the stupid.
By: Marc Ferman
