AWAtT keeps you guessing. Even if it's only,"Who, or what genre, was that a shout-out to?" or, "Did they make this up as they went along?" Matt Scudder (Neeson) is an ex-cop, a Philip Marlowe-esque, Mike Ehrmantraut-ish, Liam Neeson-ish, paid-up AA(A) member who does the odd private job since his Captain Beefheart days when it was whiskey for breakfast. The barman is shot as robbers strike; At that, Matt grabs his gat, two hoods go splat, and another never walks without a limp again.8 years later, he discusses Raymond Chandler with a black 14-year-old street kid in the library, and takes him for a vegeburger. WHOAH! I don't like where this is going. He forgets his promise to the librarian to clean up the toilets. What a rogue! A gangster's wife has been kidnapped. At this point, the scriptwriter was too, it would seem.The Goodies are Russian drug dealers, so y'know, only Liam Neeson will do. Being Irish, Liam trumps everything but English, and English is always trumped by American, so the Americans actually win without actually being rude to the Russians and at the same time being nice to the Irish (which annoys the English). Because even bystander-killing alcoholic US ex-cops are better than deviant sadists. I think I have that correct.A van is resprayed. by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.There's a couple of women, who never meet: the blonde has duct tape over her mouth and gets dismembered, and the less neurotic brunette, of whom I remember little more than a surreal "Red Riding Hood" scene with rock music. The Feds turn up and the plot goes to pieces. There may be another female character who is ransomed from: - Chief Baddie Ming the Merciless, who could be construed as 'where the Russian from the Sopranos went', except he has a goatee beard and he's skinny. From one angle he looks like John Malkovich. The twist being that we all thought he was The Guy We Thought Was Chief Baddie's Sidekick until well over half way. What a character arc put through a EXOR gate would be like.Oh, and aforementioned magic black character kid. who is homeless at 14, has sickle disease, and draws superheroes. Doesn't get cured of either. He at least gets to fall asleep before the end, which is more than I did. Matt Scudder doesn't stay awake for the credits.In the end I was left guessing that 50p in a boot fair works out at 25p an hour to be kept not entertained, but guessing. Awake, basically. Which is cheaper than watching Jeopardy, and there are no ads, apart from the trailers at the beginning for more brainless, unimaginative, overproduced nonsense. I'll look out for Liam Neeson in, 'Awake!' The story of a a man who buys a movie studio and finds it was all a dream.

Though I haven't watched a lot of them yet (I've mainly devoted my time, of late, to catching up on 1920-1970s cinematic milestones), I have a profound respect for the new roles Liam Neeson has taken on in recent years. It makes me think of what would have been had my favourite actor ever, James Cagney, hadn't basically retired for the quiet life in the early 60's, when the perfect storm of 'great actors in B-movies' hit the fans.My lady is more a horror aficionado, and of recent vintage films, so it was nice to throw this on for a spin and show her its neo-noir tendencies, almost as if going through a 'make your own movie' template, checking them off one-by-one. I don't mind that sort of rote predictability if it's done right, and, though heavily flawed, for the most part it does. By the climax, I basically only cared for four things: that the kidnapped girl, Matthew Scudder and TJ were alive, and that the two kidnappers/murderers got their just desserts, whether it be lengthy incarceration or murder, anything so their crime spree would be ended. The film was well-made and a very enjoyable experience, so considering the relatively minor flaws (especially the one-dimensional aspect of the antagonists), I would definitely recommend at least a watch for most cinephiles out there, especially those interested in 'true crime' type of contemporary American cinema.

The detective story has been a staple of movies for years. Everything from the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes to the down and dirty Phillip Marlowe have been on display, making the private detective a character that can be either slick or down and dirty. Author Lawrence Block has made a career of writing about one detective in particular, Matthew Scudder. While the character has been around since 1976, only one movie has been made featuring him, 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE. That is until the release this last year of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES which has just arrived on DVD.Liam Neeson plays the title character, a police detective when the film begins in 1991 and then a private detective 8 years later shortly thereafter. Scudder is a recovering alcoholic due to scenes we witness in the opening. Peter (Boyd Holbrook), a fellow addict who met Scudder at an AA meeting, shows up one day and asks for his help for his brother Ken (Dan Stevens). Scudder reluctantly agrees.It turns out that Ken is a high end drug dealer whose wife was kidnapped. When Scudder tells him he doesn't handle kidnapping cases Ken informs him that he's already paid the ransom and that the kidnappers returned his wife in pieces. He wants Scudder to help him find the kidnappers/murderers.While looking into the case Scudder discovers there have been more cases of victims cut into pieces and dumped around town. As he researches the information at the library he meets T.J. (Astro), a young homeless boy. The pair gradually help one another as T.J. helps Scudder navigate the library's computer. In return Scudder pays T.J. Eventually this becomes a situation where they pair help one another as the film progresses.Using clues to track down information about the past murders Scudder comes to realize that they have all been connected. Each of the victims was tied to a drug dealer in one form or another. This prevented those the ransom was demanded of from contacting the police. With each piece of information Scudder gathers the closer he gets to the kidnappers/murderers. But will he turn them over to those whose loved ones were kidnapped knowing full well they'll seek their revenge or will he contact the police? While these are the basics of the story found in this movie it's more about the journey taken by Scudder that is the heart of the film. Scudder has been a rudderless person when we see him in 1999. He lives but isn't alive. The combination of helping the families of the victims and his own helping of T.J. bring him back to the real world, one he gets involved in rather than merely walks through.The movie and the performances reflect the gritty streets that exists as opposed to the glamorous cityscapes seen in most detective movies these days. Scudder is no slick hustler with a quick $20 in his pocket dealt out to tons of connections. He is instead a diligent investigator who claims it's more about luck while delving into the problem at hand. The world he walks in is drab and dirty, more grays, brown and blacks for a color palette than the bright neon's we're used to seeing. This is the truth of what the occupation offers instead of the glitz most movies offer. In the end it helps rather than hurts the film.Neeson does a fine job here, never yelling or doing the acrobatic styles of fighting most films, including his own TAKEN series, offer. He remains calm in most situations and doesn't carry a gun. When he does arm himself it's the last thing he does. There is even a section of the film where he warns T.J. about the dangers of walking around armed. With Neeson's recent comments on guns in America he still has no problem walking around shooting people when the character calls for it. But the fact is this is a movie and he's entitled to his opinion. The movie hearkens back to some of the detective films of the seventies rather than the typical gumshoe of the thirties and forties. Streets are dirty, killers are despicable and drug dealers live in nice houses but not mansions. As with those films it is the diligence on display by the detective that helps him find the bad guy. In a world overrun with numerous car chases and enough arms to supply a small army it's nice to see a return to this kind of detective. Here's hoping we see more of Matt Scudder.

Grim-faced Liam Neeson stars as a former NYC cop, unlicensed PI, and recovering alcoholic brought into a dangerous situation involving drug traffickers and the two one-time functionaries in the DEA who happened across their files while working for the government (in whatever capacity that seems undetermined) that extort from them (and kill their kidnapped loved ones after receipt of payment). Neeson's Matt Scudder is asked by a drug trafficker (Dan Stevens) to find the ones responsible for killing his wife, supposedly after he paid a ransom for her return (the body found in numerous pieces in bags). Matt met this trafficker's brother, Peter (Boyd Holbrook), at an addicts meeting, and their association has them eventually in a cat-and-mouse with psychopaths Ray and Albert (David Harbour and Adam David Thompson). Ray is gabby and full of wicked glee while Albert is subdued, cold, and detached…they live together, drive around in a white van, pursue the drug traffickers on the files they secured, build a kidnap plot, take their women, ask for ransom, and typically butcher those kidnapped, chopping up the bodies in their basement, and tossing off the bagged body parts in areas of their city. Scudder plans to find them and stop them. When a Russian trafficker's daughter is taken, Scudder will negotiate a meet-and-swap, but, of course, it all goes down violently.Provided a character with more meat on the bones than usual, Neeson morosely works the PI beat with a clever, intuitive mind and determined drive, befriending a discarded African-American youth named TJ (Astro) he tries to offer paternal and streetwise advice to so he can survive. A bullet to the eye of a little girl during a shootout with three grocery store hoods changed Scudder's life for good. This film has a subversive edge to it thanks to the two killers-kidnappers involved and Scudder's own journey to find them, often encountering all kinds of dangers along the way as the city offers its peril to him. The garrote shows up, as does the knife, taser, and gun, and there's plenty of unpleasantness Scudder must find his way through to get to the killers. As you might have guessed, the ending particularly is violent. Neeson, once again, carries the film, an anchor of surefootedness, ably convincing as this flawed man looking for redemption and absolution, perhaps getting his chance when a little girl is kidnapped. The shady characters opposite him aren't stereotypes, as the actors portraying them are given multi-faceted human beings using the drug trade as a means to live and thrive (the Russian has a bedridden invalid wife lost to the world he must take care of), but they aren't one-dimensional caricatures which is a plus in the film's favor. The dreary, crime-infested cityscape is quite a setting for Neeson's melancholy PI to work within. Ray and Albert are a creepy duo; one scene shows them sitting around a table eating breakfast while Ray comments that Y2K, listed on the front page of the newspaper, is not what the city should be worried about. A flashback involving a third partner of Ray and Albert's, for which Scudder questions, is certainly perhaps the most unsettling point in the movie.