If you're expecting a Non-Stop, Taken 2-style Liam Neeson movie, then don't! A Walk Among the Tombstones is a darker and more serious film. And its ultimate greatness is its power to bore you!
Liam Neeson plays a private investigator who's hired to stop a spree of kidnappings. I'm usually a sucker for Neeson playin' a bad mother-brother with a past. But even he can't save this b-movie mess. The plot is basically every cop show on TV right now.
The story fails because it can't decide if it wants to be a procedural, a character study, or a buddy cop movie. Instead, we're pushed into a rabbit hole without any cool twists or turns. Plus, how many times have we've seen Liam Neeson play a bruised alcoholic cop? Also, Neeson's relationship with his teen sidekick T.J. (Bradley) felt contrite. I don't care if it was in the book because here it just aims to add more "dimension" to the plot. Instead, it should give our lonely hero a fully realized relationship with another human being.
Despite some solid acting and cinematography, this movie has a pace that makes all three Lord of the Rings feel like a commercial. You can throw in The Hobbit movies too. It isn't until the movie's climax that stuff really goes down. And if that's good enough for you, then I rest my case and will dig my own grave.
