Director: Juame Collet-Serra
Cast: Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Ed Harris
Running Time: 115 minutes
Certificate: 15
Synopsis: Ageing hit-man Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) is forced to take on his brutal former boss Shawn Maguire (Harris) to protext his estranged son Mike (Kinnaman) and his family following the death of Shawn’s son Danny (Holbrook).
It is official – Liam Neeson has become an entire separate genre of film… and not in a good way. Coming to cinemas this Friday, RUN ALL NIGHT is the mid-March Neeson flick that we’ve all been waiting for. This time around? A bumbling, old-timey hit-man turned ageing alcoholic with a penchant for ominous phone-calls and erratic car chases. Sound familiar? Oh wait, that’s every Liam Neeson film. Now, if you’re worried about spoilers, be comforted in the knowledge that this flick is just as formulaic as the rest of Neeson’s filmography, just with slightly better camera work, unnecessarily large explosions, and mind-numbingly long fist fights. This is usually the part of a review where the writer states that you’ll be ‘on the edge of your seat’, but suffice it to say that RUN ALL NIGHT will have you rooting around in your popcorn bucket for something less soul-destroying to do than have to sit through the remainder of the film.
RUN ALL NIGHT follows Jimmy Conlon on his ROAD TO PERDITION-esque voyage to protect his son Michael, who is on the run from the son of an esteemed coke dealer from the seventies – and as luck would have it, said esteemed coke dealer is also the man who hired Jimmy all those years ago to kill his rivals. Sound interesting? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Through two hours of man-tears, characters so uninteresting that it’s an insult to even call them one dimensional, emotionally stunted dialogue, and a calibre of violence that even Tarantino would be questioning (and yet more man-tears), RUN ALL NIGHT is little more than car chase after dramatic police escape after gun fight, after gun fight, after another gun fight. There is no stand-out moment that makes this B-list film any different from the plethora of others in this genre, nor is there a rollercoaster of conflict, climax, resolution and conclusion.
If you’re a stickler for a good action thriller, heed this warning to not put yourself through such strife.
[usr=1] RUN ALL NIGHT hits cinemas from 13th March.
