Run All Night Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Ed Harris. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Rated R. Opens Friday.
Refreshingly, fascinatingly, the biggest action-thriller star in America right now is still a 60-something Irishman. In his new movie Run All Night, Liam Neeson plays Jimmy, an aging hitman plagued by his past and taking refuge in booze; his drunken performance as Santa at a mob Christmas party is both funny and sad. Jimmy’s childhood pal Shawn (Ed Harris) is a successful mobster. After a disagreement with heroin dealers, Shawn’s live-wire son levels his gun at Jimmy’s own estranged—but innocent—son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Jimmy dispatches him, Mike gets the blame, and soon a city full of gangsters and cops are after father and son over the course of one long night.
Neeson reunites here with director Jaume Collet-Serra, of Unknown (2011) and Non-Stop (2014). Not the subtlest of directors, Collet-Serra seems to have an appreciation for actors, and while his obligatory, sludgy action scenes can sometimes appear thrown together, he genuinely enjoys little byplays between characters. These wiseguys know each other well and are all from the same New York neighborhood, and they’re capable of having a chat, or making a couple of jokes, just before trying to kill one another. The scenes with Harris and Neeson, especially, have a touching shorthand, an unspoken bond that goes much farther than any shootouts and car crashes.
