Run All Night is in part meat-n-potatoes action filmmaking... or it would be if not for a few things. First is that the director, Jaume Collet-Sera, is a little afraid of the audience possibly being 'bored' or receiving the same-old-same-old with these things called transitions from scenes taking place in other parts of the city. If you've seen a video game (ala Grand Theft Audo 5) or even Google-Maps, you'll see how this becomes one of those 'flashy-for-the-sake-of-it' moments that you sort of forget or take for granted that filmmakers get away with sometimes. And the story is, from my perspective, a bit of a lift from Road to Perdition: a man who's worked his whole life for a big-time criminal boss becomes a target - as does the hit-man's son - over some BS with the boss' terrible waste of a son, and so they go on the run, with an expert hit-man hired to track down the father and son (in other words, replace Liam Neeson, Ed Harris and Common with Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law, you get the idea).
But really, this is good Hollywood action filmmaking that does at least TRY to put forward character first. We get this story of aging gangsters who grew up together and now see their world fall apart due to a number of factors - pride, grief, revenge, self-preservation, family instincts, any number of things to say 'Blood is Blood' - and it's people like Neeson and Harris in the leads making it full of heart and vitality. They don't always have to say much, or they say just enough, like when they sit down at a restaurant and nothing gets settled midway through the film. It's a moment where characters have to confront what they feel they have to do, right or (especially so) wrong, or several others in the film, that in all practicality trump the action set pieces.
Luckily, those action sequences do work better than expected. Some of the editing - OK, a good lot of it - is still fast and frenetic, but you can tell what's going on here, as opposed to Neeson's Taken franchise pics. There's one where a chase happens on the streets of Brooklyn that's a slight echo of French Connection, only here it's got a different charge with it being a crooked cop vehicle being chased, and then another in a subway bathroom that feels raw and even, at one point, outrageously funny.
Run All Night has several familiar tropes - the dumb gangster's son going over-board and the revenge plot aren't exclusive to Perdition (I've been told online John Wick bears a striking resemblance to the film as well) - and yet it's the characters and the acting that helps rise above some dumb choices made by characters at times, flaws that crop up. You're sure to spot them as well as I did, but what's on the side of the filmmakers is a) Neeson's presence and performance, which digs into playing a not-at-all-likable guy and making him a hero of a different order than his superhero-Taken man, and b) the ticking clock of it all being over one agonizing night.
So, in other words, it's worth a watch, especially if you dig New York city set thrillers and can adjust - not to say 'turn off' - the brain to its frequency of asking just enough, if not much more. It's biggest crime is that it probably won't inspire a bunch of revisits to it, unless if one just can't get enough of the actors (one of who is Common as a Terminator-like hit-man, which is unexpectedly satisfying as far as stunt casting goes).
But really, this is good Hollywood action filmmaking that does at least TRY to put forward character first. We get this story of aging gangsters who grew up together and now see their world fall apart due to a number of factors - pride, grief, revenge, self-preservation, family instincts, any number of things to say 'Blood is Blood' - and it's people like Neeson and Harris in the leads making it full of heart and vitality. They don't always have to say much, or they say just enough, like when they sit down at a restaurant and nothing gets settled midway through the film. It's a moment where characters have to confront what they feel they have to do, right or (especially so) wrong, or several others in the film, that in all practicality trump the action set pieces.
Luckily, those action sequences do work better than expected. Some of the editing - OK, a good lot of it - is still fast and frenetic, but you can tell what's going on here, as opposed to Neeson's Taken franchise pics. There's one where a chase happens on the streets of Brooklyn that's a slight echo of French Connection, only here it's got a different charge with it being a crooked cop vehicle being chased, and then another in a subway bathroom that feels raw and even, at one point, outrageously funny.
Run All Night has several familiar tropes - the dumb gangster's son going over-board and the revenge plot aren't exclusive to Perdition (I've been told online John Wick bears a striking resemblance to the film as well) - and yet it's the characters and the acting that helps rise above some dumb choices made by characters at times, flaws that crop up. You're sure to spot them as well as I did, but what's on the side of the filmmakers is a) Neeson's presence and performance, which digs into playing a not-at-all-likable guy and making him a hero of a different order than his superhero-Taken man, and b) the ticking clock of it all being over one agonizing night.
So, in other words, it's worth a watch, especially if you dig New York city set thrillers and can adjust - not to say 'turn off' - the brain to its frequency of asking just enough, if not much more. It's biggest crime is that it probably won't inspire a bunch of revisits to it, unless if one just can't get enough of the actors (one of who is Common as a Terminator-like hit-man, which is unexpectedly satisfying as far as stunt casting goes).