Why 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' defines Liam Neeson (2024)

Why 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' defines Liam Neeson (1)

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The next time you’re at the pub chatting about movies with your cinephile pals, do me a favour: ask them what their definitive Liam Neeson movie is. I’m willing to bet you’ll receive one of a handful of responses. Your classier friends will probably say Schindler’s List – and that’s a perfectly rational answer. Neeson was nominated for a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for that harrowing Spielberg classic, after all. Your buddies who love action movies will almost certainly say Taken, and that’s also a valid call. It’s no Schindler’s List, obviously, but watching Big Liam cut a swathe of destruction through a group of Albanian sex traffickers in Paris is undeniably satisfying to watch.

Some of your nerdier pals may say Batman Begins, and that’s cool too. If any of them say Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, though, they’ve successfully found the wrong answer. I’m willing to bet good money that nobody will say A Walk Among the Tombstones, though, and that’s a damn shame. You see, this sinister 2014 neo-noir is my pick for the definitive Neeson picture – and here’s why.

Neeson plays former NYPD detective Matt Scudder in this wonderfully sinister and mournful film. Scudder is your typical hardboiled noir protagonist – he’s an ex-cop with a tragic past, a recovering alcoholic who attends every AA meeting location in New York, and a guy with a knowledge of the city’s underbelly that few could match. Scudder works as an unlicensed private investigator for people on both sides of the law. He doesn’t take payment, per se, but rather does “favours” for people – and when rich drug dealer Kenny Kristo hires him to find the people who kidnapped and murdered his wife, Scudder agrees to take on the job.

Scudder soon finds himself on the trail of a pair of sadists who kidnap and ransom the family members of criminals because they know these kinds of people are unlikely to go to the police. They never have any intention of returning the victims to their families, though – because they’re actually serial killers who just want to make a quick buck before they murder their prey.

It should already be apparent from this description that A Walk Among the Tombstones is darker than the typical Neeson action joint. In truth, it’s not an action film but a pulpy mystery thriller with an atmosphere that feels more akin to a horror flick than most crime movies. Unfortunately, it was released in September 2014 at the height of a spate of action thrillers Neeson had been making. That year alone saw the release of Non-Stop and Taken 3, while Run All Night quickly followed in March 2015. It meant the movie was marketed as one of Neeson’s Taken-esque actioners, and it returned middling reviews and mediocre box office numbers to match.

The movie doesn’t just deserve a second look, though – it deserves a complete reappraisal. It’s written and directed with clockwork precision by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit, Logan, Out of Sight), and the suspense he wrings out of every scene is incredible. The cast is superb, with Dan Stevens and Boyd Holbrook playing the Kristo brothers and a pre-Stranger Things David Harbour playing one of the killers. Seriously, the scenes with Harbour and Adam David Thompson cruising the city in their murder van are skin-crawling, and you’ll want nothing more than for Scudder to put a bullet in them.

A special shout-out also has to be given to Carlos Rafael Rivera’s score, which sounds like it belongs more in a film like The Omen than a typical PI movie. The score, coupled with Mihai Mălaimare Jr’s shadowy cinematography, makes it seem like New York City has already gone to Hell – the characters just haven’t realised it yet.

It goes without saying that A Walk Among the Tombstones is a great movie. It’s maybe even the most underrated project in Neeson’s catalogue. But why do I think it’s the definitive Neeson movie? Well, it undoubtedly helps that I’m a big fan of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder books, upon which this film is based. They’re all short, sharp blasts of tough guy noir with awesome titles like A Long Line of Dead Men, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, The Devil Knows You’re Dead, and A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

Neeson’s portrayal of Scudder is pitch-perfect. He sells the right amount of sadness at his core and is entirely convincing as the no-nonsense avenging angel willing to get his hands dirtier than most criminals he deals with. Even Block himself was impressed, tweeting, “Saw A Walk Among The Tombstones today. Liam Neeson brilliant as Scudder.”

However, the movie is the definitive Neeson picture because, for better or worse, when I think of Neeson these days, I think of sad, tough guys wearing leather jackets who seek redemption for their past sins. He is still an excellent actor who can do drama, comedy, and anything else he puts his mind to—but to me, this is now his oeuvre. He’s the modern Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one.

Indeed, it’s hard not to believe that the inner melancholy at the heart of most of Neeson’s modern characters is informed, at least in part, by the tragic passing of his wife, Natasha Richardson, in 2009. He has admitted to throwing himself into work in the wake of her death, and I do believe that real-life grief shines through in movies like A Walk Among the Tombstones.

Ultimately, then, this is the best version of what Neeson has been for the past 15 years of his career – and that’s why it’s definitive.

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