Something I had long suspected has now been confirmed with “A Walk Among the Tombstones”- Liam Neeson has comfortably slipped into the “unassuming tough guy” shoes left vacant with Charles Bronson’s passing.
Had this movie been made thirty years ago, it would have starred Bronson. After years of westerns and supporting roles in classic machismo films like “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Dirty Dozen” and “The Great Escape,” Bronson saw a resurgence in his cinematic career at the age of 53 with 1974’s “Death Wish” portraying Paul Kersey, a mild-mannered architect who goes on a vigilante killing spree after his wife and daughter are raped and murdered by some New York City thugs.
Neeson, a dependable actor and Oscar-nominated for his work as the ultimate mild-mannered businessman/Nazi vigilante Oskar Schindler in “Schindler’s List,” achieved bankable movie star status at the age of 56 with his role in 2008’s “Taken” portraying Bryan Mills, a retired CIA agent who tracks down and punishes the Parisian sex slave traders who kidnapped his daughter.
Let’s face it, no one doles out justice and serves up a can of good ol’ American whoop-ass like a middle-aged man from the U.S. of A, am I right? While Bronson catered to this built-in American male audience with four subsequent Death Wish sequels (the last being Death Wish V: The Face of Death in 1994- 20 years after the original) and assorted vigilante/cop/assassin thrillers, Neeson has picked up the blam-blam baton with 2012’s “Taken 2,” this year’s “Non-Stop” and will continue his retiree-renegade run with next year’s “Taken 3.”
So, does “Walk” merit anything more than a reference to Neeson being the next Bronson? A little. Based on one of 17 novels in Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series, “A Walk Among the Tombstones” keeps the template of the old-fashioned detective novels by ensnaring recovering alcoholic, retired New York City cop and licensed P.I. Scudder into a meeting with a drug dealer whose wife has been kidnapped and held for ransom. As the mafia are the policemen for criminals, so is Scudder enlisted to investigate- he left the force following a tragic accident off-duty and was referred by the drug dealer’s brother who met Scudder through their mutual A.A. meetings. When Scudder politely refuses the offer, the drug dealer tells him that the kidnappers have killed his wife, bagging her body parts and stuffing them into an abandoned car trunk after the ransom had been paid. The dealer then hands Scudder a tape recorder that was taped to the trunk’s lid along with a note reading “For your listening pleasure.” On the tape are his wife’s screams as she is being vivisectioned. Once Scudder hits Play, he agrees to take the drug dealer’s case and the can of whoop-ass is ready to be opened.
This is a good old-fashioned “peeling the onion” kind of detective story with the penchant for great pulp fiction that readers of Donald E. Westlake or Jim Thompson have come to expect. Block, an Edgar award-winning writer, doesn’t disappoint. Replete with psychopathic sadists, double-crosses and brutal twists, “Walk” never blanches in its violent repercussions. Whatever formulaic story devices are used are momentarily forgotten with depravity-drawn characters. While no one is reinventing the wheel with “Walk,” they are adding spikes to the hub and making sure a lot of dirt is kicked up in its wake.
As likeable as “Walk” is, it’s as easily forgettable- save for the characters that spin the common into the criminal. The Scudder novels have had a rough time being translated into cinematic franchise gold: Jeff Bridges played Scudder in Hal Ashby’s 1986 film “8 Million Ways to Die” and Harrison Ford was attached to “Walk” in 2002 following his work playing Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s film adaptations, but the production deal eventually fell through.
Will Neeson break Scudder’s unlucky streak in his translation to the big screen? I doubt it. While Bronson may have gotten two decades out of the Death Wish series, Neeson’s already ‘taken.’