Ring

Ring

“Hello…”

“Honey, it’s for you! It’s Liam Neeson. He says he will find you, and wants to negotiate a kidnapping…Like we haven’t heard that before.”

Like we haven’t seen almost everything in A Walk Among the Tombstones before. I mean, really, how many times must we endure Neeson playing the former law enforcement officer barking instructions to kidnappers over the phone?

And don’t get me started on the use of AA and the Twelve Steps as a plot device. Yes, it’s a fine program that has helped millions, but you have to wonder why almost every writer in Hollywood seems to be obsessed with it lately. Incorporating it into the script has ceased to be clever, original and profound. It’s not so anonymous any more. Even my friends who swear by the program are getting tired of seeing it paraded up on the screen every 15 minutes.

By now you’ve likely surmised that I am not a fan of A Walk Among the Tombstones, based on Lawrence Block’s bestselling mystery series. It’s the directing debut of Scott Frank, who also wrote the screenplay, and prior to this was known for writing  films like Marley & Me, Out of Sight, Minority Report and Get Shorty. Oh, and on television, he’s also directed episodes of Shameless, a series that also features AA. Coincidence? I think not.

The film begins with four guys getting shot and killed point blank, and a woman murdered and cut up into little pieces, the latter being another gruesome and tired plot device that has been around since the Old Testament. Seriously—See Judges 19:29-30.  A Walk Among the Tombstones is not a case of what’s old is new again. It’s a case of what’s old is tedious again, not to mention needlessly violent and macabre.

Rated R

1 hour 54 minutes

http://youtu.be/0JjRoh13vzY