Run All Night—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell

Run All Night.Released: March 13, 2015. Runtime: 114 mins. Rated: R for strong violence, language including sexual references, and some drug use.

Lately, there has been somewhat of a trend of featuring stars “of a certain age” in action roles. Sometimes, as in The Expendables series (three films out, three more planned), with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action figures cast have not been noted for much else besides their past action roles. (OK, Sly also did the Rocky series and Ahnold played a Gubernator, but still . . . . .) Sometimes, as in the Red series (two films out, another planned), dramatic stars (for example, Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins) are mixed in with action stars. Sometimes, as in the Taken series (three films out), the focus is on a single dramatic star (Liam Neeson) functioning as an action hero. Run All Night, released just a few weeks after Taken 3, features two well-regarded dramatic actors with long careers, Liam Neeson and Ed Harris, in a gripping film that transcends any possible cliches about “geriatric thrillers.”

In Run All Night it's a dark and stormy night in a gritty Irish=American neighborhood in New York, and the events that unfold are as dark and stormy as the weather. Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) and Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) are “well-weathered” characters, who have been friends for decades. Shawn started out as a gangster but has been trying to make the move into being just a legitimate businessman. However, his drug-dealing son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook), has been creating difficulties in that transition. Jimmy's situation is partially the mirror image of Shawn's. He had been a hitman for Shawn “back in the day” but is now a down-on-his-luck alcoholic, estranged from his son, Mike  (Jeff Kinnamon), who is a family man trying to make an honest living and profoundly ashamed of his father.

Danny's contacts with the Albanian mob lead to very bad consequences for him, for which Mike is blamed. Shawn sends his crew after Mike, and Jimmy comes to Mike's defense. This turns the two old friends into mortal enemies. Relentless, almost nonstop, action ensues—fistfights, gunfights, shootings, beatings, foot chases, car chases, fires, explosions. Cops, both good (Vincent D'Onofrio) and bad, join in the combat. Director Jaume Collet-Serra serves up all this mayhem with striking visuals, imaginatively edited, and very effective use of actual New York City locations. One notable sequence

has Mike fleeing through a whole city block of back yards, leaping over low wall after low wall, with his pursuer close behind. Another sequence involving a series of struggles in a high-rise apartment building in a housing complex may be the most cinematically dramatic use of such a setting since Soviet director Eisenstein's classic Strike (1925).

Collet-Serra also makes the interaction of his cast—both the veteran thesps Neeson and Harris and the very promising newbies (relatively speaking) Kinnamon and Holbrook—quite moving in the scenes of conversation that provide some necessary breathing space in the action. Particularly moving are certain scenes between Shawn and Jimmy and between Jimmy and Mike.

If Run All Night had come out in the 1940s or 1950s, it might have been dubbed a “B picture,” only to be hailed as a “cinematic gem” in later years. The movie definitely is a diamond in the (very rough) rough!

“Footnote” to the film: Who knew? While huge numbers of young girls flocked to Disney's new megahit, Cinderella, surveys of the modest audiences for the testosterone-fueled Run All Night revealed the surprising fact that those audiences were more than half female. Apparently, women find Liam Neeson very appealing, with or without guns.