It's the latest addition to the Irish father-son sub-genre of the all-American father-son genre, which is a subsidiary of the senior-citizen action-hero category. In Run All Night, Liam Neeson and Ed Harris square off as partners-in-crime- turned-deadly adversaries.
Neeson’s Jimmy has been reduced to sponging off Harris’s more successful criminal, or more accurately, his obnoxious cocaine-snorting son Danny (Boyd Holbrook). He also worries about his own child Michael (Joel Kinnaman), who works as a chauffeur while also teaching fatherless kids to box as a way of gaining their self-esteem.
Michael, of course, hates Jimmy, and tries to keep him away from his pregnant wife and young daughters. What Michael doesn’t know is that Jimmy is haunted by his long list of murders and is seeking redemption. It comes in the form of Danny’s accidental death during a botched drug deal, for which Michael is blamed even though Jimmy pulled the trigger. Cue a long chase until dawn through a vividly shot New York City, which pulsates with phosphorescent colours and atmospherics in sufficient quantities to make this standard-issue thriller watchable.
The action is brutal and well executed, and tension is an end into itself in director Jaume Collet-Serra’s hands. Run All Night stays true to its title. It’s never short of breath but lacks breadth. It is less of a character study than a series of taut action sequences, many of them set in a fog of light and shadow, that have more depth than the writing. Rapper and actor Common has a small but vivid role as Price, a ruthless killer who, in one of the screenplay’s many contrivances, is the only person who guesses where Michael might be holed up.
Harris isn’t as effective as Neeson, but that could be simply because he hasn’t had as much practice in playing troubled fathers who also happen to know how to handle firearms. Neeson’s vulnerable visage could be from Taken (any of the three parts) or, for that matter, Grey – it doesn’t matter. He is the father to beat all fathers, and has been fittingly cast as a Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming period movie Silence.
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Neeson’s Jimmy has been reduced to sponging off Harris’s more successful criminal, or more accurately, his obnoxious cocaine-snorting son Danny (Boyd Holbrook). He also worries about his own child Michael (Joel Kinnaman), who works as a chauffeur while also teaching fatherless kids to box as a way of gaining their self-esteem.
Michael, of course, hates Jimmy, and tries to keep him away from his pregnant wife and young daughters. What Michael doesn’t know is that Jimmy is haunted by his long list of murders and is seeking redemption. It comes in the form of Danny’s accidental death during a botched drug deal, for which Michael is blamed even though Jimmy pulled the trigger. Cue a long chase until dawn through a vividly shot New York City, which pulsates with phosphorescent colours and atmospherics in sufficient quantities to make this standard-issue thriller watchable.
The action is brutal and well executed, and tension is an end into itself in director Jaume Collet-Serra’s hands. Run All Night stays true to its title. It’s never short of breath but lacks breadth. It is less of a character study than a series of taut action sequences, many of them set in a fog of light and shadow, that have more depth than the writing. Rapper and actor Common has a small but vivid role as Price, a ruthless killer who, in one of the screenplay’s many contrivances, is the only person who guesses where Michael might be holed up.
Harris isn’t as effective as Neeson, but that could be simply because he hasn’t had as much practice in playing troubled fathers who also happen to know how to handle firearms. Neeson’s vulnerable visage could be from Taken (any of the three parts) or, for that matter, Grey – it doesn’t matter. He is the father to beat all fathers, and has been fittingly cast as a Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming period movie Silence.
