Run All Night

The opening scene of Run All Night shoots the movie in the foot right from the word go, putting its audience in a hopeless mood.  Then, little by little, the movie improves, and I started to get involved in the story it was telling.  And then, just when I think it's going to work, the movie again slips up and never quite recovers.  While it is well made and more than watchable, the movie fails to live up completely to the promise it has when it really works.

Let's talk about that opening scene.  The movie makes the mistake of using a flashback structure, and it kicks off right in the middle of the ending scene.  Even though we have no real idea toward the finer details of what's going on, the images and the voice over by Liam Neeson all but spells out how this story is going to end.  I'm not going to go into any detail of the content of that scene, but it's a move from which the film never quite recovers.  Lose the flashback structure, and we might have cared more about these characters.  The story proper begins the previous day from the opening scene, and we are introduced to the latest tortured and violent character in Neeson's resume, Jimmy Conlon.  Jimmy was once a feared hitman working for his friend and crime boss, Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris).  Now, he's pretty much lost everything, except for his friendship with Shawn.

Jimmy has an adult son who has written him out of his life, and wants nothing to do with the world of violence and crime that his father lives in.  That son is Michael (Joel Kinnaman), who is trying to build a decent life for his wife and two young daughters.  He tried his hand at being a professional boxer once, but his career never took off, so he works now as a limo driver.  While working one night, Michael happens to witness a murder pulled off by Shawn's son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook).  Michael goes on the run, but Danny tracks him down and tries to kill him.  Jimmy gets to Danny first, shooting him dead, and now Shawn wants revenge on both Jimmy and Michael for the death of his son.  There are dirty cops everywhere, with the only good one in the film being played by Vincent D'Onofrio, and he's been looking for an excuse to throw Jimmy behind bars for years, so he won't listen to them.  Michael will have to rely on his father's expertise in the crime world if he wants to survive and keep his family safe.

The stuff that works in Run All Night are the scenes concerning the relationship between Jimmy and Michael.  This is not really a film where the son realizes his father has loved him all along, and the two reconcile.  Rather, this is a film about two people who have been distant with each other all their lives, and are forced to rely on each other.  Neeson and Kinnaman are both very good individually, and share some great scenes together early on when the movie is focused on them.  These are fascinating characters, and I also enjoyed the relationship between Jimmy and Shawn.  The two men, made enemies due to recent events, obviously have a lot of respect for each other, and both obviously wish they knew another way to handle the situation they're in.  The movie creates some complex character relationships here, and the dark and tragic characters kind of reminded me of the Neeson film from last fall, A Walk Among the Tombstones, which I enjoyed.  When the movie felt like it was going down the same path as that film, I was intrigued.

But then, the movie starts to resemble a junky car flying down the highway, with the individual parts flying off.  Little by little, it loses what was making it work for so long, and just becomes one long chase picture.  Just when we start really getting behind these characters, the script goes on auto pilot, and can't think of anything to do with them except have them engage in one shoot out or car chase after another.  My heart began to sink right around this point.  The movie was starting to pick itself up after fumbling so badly in the opening, and I was really looking forward to finding out what would happen to these characters.  Turns out all I had to look forward to were some action sequences that are handled well, but don't exactly excite because there's nothing new about them.  They follow the age-old formula where the bad guys can't hit the broad side of a barn, while the heroes never miss.  This is another movie where the bullets have read the screenplay in advance, and only hit a person when it is required.

If only the movie had kept up the character-heavy direction it seemed to be going in early on, I wouldn't mind so much.  But eventually, it gets to the point that the characters are running around and shooting at each other so much that they barely have time to say two words to each other.  The movie never really offends, and has obviously been made by experts in the genre, but you still wish they didn't sell themselves short when it seemed to be going so well for a while.  And because I lost interest, I started to notice little details.  For example, the movie is set in New York City at Christmas time, a time of year where you can barely turn a street corner without seeing lights strung up everywhere.  Heck, even the street side hot dog vending carts are draped with decorations.  And yet, only the inside of buildings are decorated.  There's a scene where Liam Neeson is driving through Times Square, and we don't see a single Christmas decoration up.  It may not seem like a huge deal, but anyone who's been to that part of Manhattan at Christmas will find that image hard to swallow.

The saddest part is Run All Night could have easily worked if the screenplay had just been tweaked a little.  Drop the opening scene, keep the character relationships strong throughout the entire film, and maybe trim the running time a little (at roughly two hours, it feels a little long), and you'd have a really good movie.  There is a lot to like here, but it makes a few too many mistakes for me to fully recommend it.  It's definitely a close call, though.

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