A Walk Among the Tombstones

Scott Frank's A Walk Among the Tombstones is a dark, grim and depressing movie that is built around acts of violence toward women.  Yet, I am recommending it.  You may recall that just two weeks ago, I was quite harsh toward the thriller No Good Deed for being much the same way.  How can I slam one, and recommend the other?  It's all about filmmaking and approach, really.

Frank's film is complex, and features characters and a storyline that rewards the audience's attention.  It does not compromise, and it does not talk down to the audience.  It's stylishly made, well-acted, and it's actually about something.  Compare that to the earlier movie, which was a cheap, nasty and exploitive piece of work.  It didn't care about the characters, it had no interesting dialogue, and it existed simply to parade images of cruelty and violence across the screen.  A Walk Among the Tombstones is probably just as, if not more so, violent than No Good Deed.  But it uses its violence to tell a story, not just to grab our attention.  It is a necessary tool for what the movie is trying to achieve.  This movie also fully embraces its R-rating, while the other was PG-13, which oddly made it all the more disturbing, since it contained images that simply did not belong in a movie that teens can see by themselves, no matter how edited those images are.

This movie takes its inspiration from a novel by Lawrence Block.  Its hero, Matt Scudder, has appeared in 17 of Block's stories, and has even been brought to the screen once back in 1986 when Jeff Bridges played the character in 8 Million Ways to Die.  This time, Liam Neeson takes on the role of Matt, and from viewing the ad campaign, you might think that Neeson is really just giving a repeat performance of his character from the Taken films.  The ad campaign does surround itself with images of a kidnapped girl, and Neeson giving his cool tough guy act over the phone with the villains.  In reality, the films could not be more different.  Taken and its sequels are escapist and silly action films, while this is a gritty and sad film where sometimes the heroes and villains are indistinguishable from one another.  While there are action scenes, they are not the fun, white knuckle variety where we're cheering the hero on.  They are brutal and realistic.  Its hero is somber and weary, and the movie creates a very cold yet compelling tone where everybody, even the plucky kid who shows up from time to time, has lost a lot in their lives and are visibly wearing scars for all the world to see.

Matt Scudder used to work for the NYPD, but after a shootout with some thugs wound up killing an innocent bystander, Mike just couldn't face himself or his job anymore.  He blames the accidental death on the fact that he was drunk at the time, so he's been sober for 8 years, but the past still haunts him.  He now works as an unlicensed private investigator, doing jobs that most people in law enforcement wouldn't touch.  This brings him in touch with the Kristo brothers, Peter (Boyd Holbrook) and Kenny (Dan Stevens).  Kenny is a drug dealer whose wife was recently murdered after she was kidnapped, and he made the mistake of haggling over the ransom money with the kidnappers.  Now Kenny wants to hire Matt to track down the people who killed her, and sent her back to him in small pieces in bloody bags.  Matt is hesitant to take the job at first, but when he realizes that there have been a rash of murders of women whose bodies have been chopped up and scattered at the crime scene, he becomes determined to track the killers down before they strike again.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is uncompromising, and can be hard to watch at times, but it is always fascinating.  Scott Franks has created a slow-burn thriller that draws us in little by little, until we don't realize just how much of a grip the plot has on the viewer.  It is also aided by a strong performance by Liam Neeson, who gives a quiet and haunting performance here.  He never once loses his steely determination, not even when he is occasionally teamed up with a street smart city kid named T.J. (Brian "Astro" Bradley, recently seen in Earth to Echo).  When the kid entered the movie, and started getting wrapped up in the story, I became worried that he was going to become a wise ass comic relief sort, always putting Matt down.  Fortunately, the movie allows them to build a genuine relationship, one that is not built around insults and one liners.  The presence of the child does not soften any of the movie's emotional punch, or the chill we are supposed to feel from these characters.

Really, if there's any fault to be found with the film, it's that the final half hour or so feels needlessly dragged out.  This story, which has been moving at a pretty good pace up to this point, suddenly feels the need to slow things down just when it feels like things should be speeding up even more.  We also get a lot of odd interruptions during the climactic moments, such as flashbacks, and even a character reciting the 12 steps to the AA program.  It just feels very odd and unnecessary.  With these bizarre editing choices, as well as how slow the film's climax feels, it drags everything to a crawl so that we're ready for the end credits to come long before they do.  It's not enough to drag everything that's worked before down, but it is enough to make us wish things had ended on a stronger note.

A Walk Among the Tombstones may have a hard time finding a wide audience, due to its brutal and icy tone.  But, those who can look past that can find a really interesting mystery, some strong characters and a real sense of tension that hangs over a majority of the film.  As long as you're not the type who requires that every movie have a happy ending or a hopeful message, this is a film that is worth your time.

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