The Woman In The Yard

Playing Your
Yards Right

The Woman In The Yard
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
USA 2025
Blumhouse
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Apologies but there are some pretty big hints at spoilers in here... if you haven’t already guessed the identity of the title character from the trailer, that is.

The Woman In The Yard is Jaume Collet-Serra’s new horror movie... or possibly a dark sci-fi fantasy depending on your mindset but, I think this one pretty much crosses over into the realm of the horror film, for me at least.

The film stars Danielle Deadwyler, who was so fantastic in the TV adaptation of Station Eleven (reviewed here) as a mother who has survived the car crash which killed her husband but has gone into a sharp mental decline as a result, trying to look after her son and daughter (played brilliantly by Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha) with the bills piling up, the money and food on her farm drying up and, on the day in which the film plays out, the electricity being cut off. And then a veiled woman appears sitting in the yard, watching them and giving enigmatic and cryptic foreshadowing as to her malevolent presence here. Then she starts attacking the house in shadowy and sinister ways from her chair, which occasionally gets magically closer to the building.

And it’s a great set up for a while. I loved the first hour of this movie and I thought some of the cinematography was great, such as that great shot which is also seen in the trailer where the camera pans down from a distorted glass window shot looking out to the woman in the yard and then hitting clear glass panel but keeping the blur of the vertical line of the foreground window plummeting down the shot. And, with the various ways in which the reality of the world of the house is distorted and keyed into the shadows, I have to say the film made me think of the long, shadowy arm that the legacy of early 20th Century German Expression such as The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu has cast on cinema over the years. This film does seem to have the spirit of that atmosphere within a lot of its DNA, it seemed to me.

Alas, the last half an hour of the picture was, for me, a real dud. A lot of the mystery of the film seems to hinge on the identity of the mysterious woman and, honestly, I correctly identified who it was just from the trailer. At one point the director tries to pull the wool over the eyes of the audience by introducing another actress in the mix, Okwui Okpokwasili but, this just makes the follow through on the ending of this one even more disappointing and, although there is a certain amount of interpretation to be had of that ending (which many people will take to be a happier ending than I think they will realise when they reflect on it a little bit later, after they’ve processed it), it’s just not enough for the last act to save the movie, which had been doing pretty well up until that point.

Ultimately, The Woman In The Yard is not a terrible movie and, honestly, I was really enjoying myself for the first hour but, it really does paint itself into a corner by the end of the story and having only 5 characters in the cast, including one actress who is a total red herring, doesn’t help it so much in terms of the mystery at the centre of the tale and I think a lot of people will be judging the film solely on its end game, to be honest. So I suspect it won’t have very favourable reviews, would be my guess. Still, a good try but, at the end of the day, it doesn’t quite make it into 1950s/1960s The Twilight Zone territory, I’m afraid... which is what I suspect it’s desperately going for. Sorry for the short review but, not much else to say about this one.

Black Adam

Rock Of Eternity

Black Adam
USA/Canada/New Zealand/Hungary 2022
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Warner Brothers/DC

Let me say up front that I found Black Adam to be quite an enjoyable entertainment and I want to make that clear before getting into the negative stuff. Regular readers will know that, even in the event that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson makes a movie I don’t like (it happens occasionally), I’ve got nothing but a huge amount of respect for this actor and the good work he’s doing in the entertainment industry which, despite popular thinking, can sometimes be a lot more important and influential than it at first appears. Also, one of my favourite UK critics really panned this movie, kinda, in the most respectful way... I can see some of his points but I didn’t really have any kind of negative experience with this movie other than the few things I want to get out up front so, yeah, here goes, the bad stuff...

First up, this movie is full of racial/cultural reappropriation again. I don’t mind it so much but why is it that when various characters of certain origins are played by Western actors (I’m thinking stuff like Scarlett Johansson being called out on Ghost In The Shell, for instance) there’s a load of angry protests but when some of the characters with white origins are suddenly played by actors with a darker skin, there seems to be no equal reaction. So, yeah, some of the actors in this movie are completely wrong for the characters they are portraying from the comics and, thusly, this movie should not be considered a competent adaptation of the original source material, it has to be said (although, they all did a brilliant job in this, for sure).  I dunno, this kind of thing... and it seems to be happening a lot over the last ten years or more... just makes me consider the people making these movies are, well, making blatantly racist movies. However, live and let live is how I view it... if they want to do that to their characters then that’s down to their own conscience, I guess.

Okay... so I’m assuming this movie is also based on much updated versions of the characters than the ones I know from the comics. Black Adam was a character who began in a 1945 issue of The Marvel Family comics and he was the arch enemy... yep, a villain... of the original Captain Marvel (you know, the proper Captain Marvel who we now have to call Shazam! because of Marvel comics now owning the name of that character for a range of their own super heroes). And, he’s supposed to be like a dark mirror version of Captain Marvel... so it should really be the same actor playing Captain Marvel also playing Black Adam, in actual fact. Right now, the main cinematic incarnation of Captain Marvel... um... or Shazam! (whatever) is played by Zachary Levi, so its puzzling that The Rock, who admittedly does look a lot like the original comic book version of Captain Marvel, has been tapped for this role (although he plays it absolutely brilliantly, it has to be said). And he’s definitely supposed to be a villain... rather than an anti-hero so, yeah, they got that really wrong.

And the Justice Society Of America have been around since the end of 1940, comprising the line up of Doctor Fate, Hourman, the Spectre, Sandman, Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman. In this movie only Doctor Fate (played by Pierce Brosnan) and Hawkman (played by Aldis Hodge) are still in the line up. The Atom has been replaced by the nonsensical Atom Smasher (played by Noah Centineo) and they’ve also dropped in Cyclone (played by Quintessa Swindell). Actually, the original Atom does turn up in a cameo, played by The Fonz himself, Henry Winkler... but he’s not in the suit. The very existence of the JSA in the DC cinematic universe does, of course, throw up the big question of... why the heck did Batman put a lot of time and effort into assembling the Justice League in the movie of the same name when all of these characters were already around to help out? It doesn’t make sense. And as for Hawkman... Hodge plays him brilliantly but, yeah, see two paragraphs ago. So, well, they got all that wrong.

That’s all the negative stuff though, pretty much. Apart from maybe the stop/start, bullet time style ramping up and down of the action highlighting sequences... don't get me started.

As a film depicting modern superheroes in mythic battles of good versus evil, though... it’s a pretty good one from DC, this time around (DC bought the Captain Marvel characters out from Fawcett in the 1970s if memory serves). This new take on the Black Adam character sees him revived by the power of SHAZAM in the 21st Century and suffering severe self doubts about what his purpose is in the modern day world... although there’s so much fast paced action in this one that the emotional resonance of the character, which is certainly all present and correct, seems a little tempered by the ‘all in’ assault on the senses that the modern superhero movie seems to have progressed/deteriorated into. But it’s entertaining action and it has a bright heart at its centre, for sure... so I can’t be too harsh on it.

What is surprising is the absence of an appearance by Captain Marvel... sorry, Shazam, in this one. Although the film does go out of its way to embed itself firmly into the current, if somewhat confusing, incarnation of the DC cinematic universe, with a character who was last seen in The Suicide Squad (reviewed by me here) making an appearance at both the start and end of the movie.

And it’s nice musically too. Lorne Balfe’s score really goes for it (and the CD the company has seen fit to release... thanks very much... will be going straight onto my Christmas list). Lots of strong, heroic stuff with some powerful choral support which all, because of the visual excesses of the movie, somehow don’t overpower it. And talking of the music, Balfe gets a little bit of help from both Ennio Morricone and John Williams in the movie too. There’s a scene early on in the picture where one of the characters is watching the denouement scene from one of Sergio Leone’s early spaghetti Westerns. It made me very angry because the TV station the character is watching it on is showing the film in totally the wrong aspect ratio and that just shouldn’t be allowed. However, there’s a brilliant parody of this same scene which turns up later when Black Adam finds himself in a similar showdown, very much filmed in the way Leone might have done it and, of course, a re-recording or reorchestration of Morricone’s score from that same scene is used here. And as for John Williams... well... all I’m saying is stick around for the post/mid credits scene at the end of the picture. It’s worth waiting for.

And that’s me done on Black Adam. It’s really not a bad film as some critics have alluded and, that’s kind of besides the point anyway because, once again, the people have voted with their wallets and I understand it’s got one of the strongest openings for this kind of movie to date. I am assuming this character (played by The Rock) will be returning for various sequels and crossovers in the near future and, rightly so in my opinion, this wasn’t a bad film at all, although I wish a certain member of the JSA had survived until the end of the movie to return with him. But, yeah, shush, spoilers.

Jungle Cruise

Conquist Adore

Jungle Cruise
Disney USA  2021
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Well this is a huge slice of fun filled family adventure for cinemagoers, during the illusory 'let up' from the perils of Covid. Jungle Cruise is based on the long standing Disney theme park ride of the same name and was originally started into development after the success of the first of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies (also based on a Disney ride with a long history). It wasn’t until Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) came along as a producing partner that the film finally got properly off the ground and realised in the form you see it in now. Which is pretty much an action adventure much like the Indiana Jones, Lara Croft or Stephen Sommer’s The Mummy movies.

After a long, historical flash back sequence filling in the audience of a plot device involving the magical, supernaturally charged ‘Petals Of The Moon’ which can cure all ills and can be found with the aid of a specific sacred arrow head, if it happens to be in your possession... the film starts off in “London, England 1916 - Two years into the Great War.” Here we meet adventuress Lily Houghton, played by the always brilliant Emily Blunt and her brother, played by Jack Whitehall, as she manages to ‘acquire’ the arrowhead to enable her, in theory, to track down the Petals Of The Moon. We then get yet another long but very funny sequence set in Brazil (where much of the action takes place), where we are introduced to river cruise skipper Frank Wolff, played by Dwayne Johnson. It’s only after this third, long introduction that we finally get the opening credits.

Then, when Lily turns up in Brazil, she charters Frank’s boat and services on the long expedition into the jungle to find the mysterious petals, being chased and threatened by a real life German villain, Prince Joachim, played by Jesse Plemons, who also wants to harness the petals for his own nefarious purposes. And we also have some other fine actors and actresses rounding off the cast too, like the magnificent Paul Giamatti, the wonderful Veronica Falcón (Perry Mason’s Mexican girlfriend in the first season of the latest TV show about that character) and Edgar Ramírez playing the conquistador Aguirre. And, yes, that’s the same Aguirre who was also portrayed on film by Klaus Kinski in Herzog’s Aguirre - The Wrath Of God.

Also, the movie both honours the Disney theme park attraction it was based on but, furthermore, there are both visual and verbal shout outs to the film that inspired that ride scattered throughout. Namely the brilliant Humphrey Bogart, Katy Hepburn, John Huston movie The African Queen... although the spirit of the movie is somewhat different in its execution here.

And its great... full of spectacular and unlikely action set pieces and comedy which are just the ticket for a wonderful evening’s entertainment... all helped along by a rousing score (sadly not on a CD so I can’t hear it away from the movie) by James Newton-Howard. And if that wasn’t enough, Johnson cracks what have now become known as ‘dad jokes’ all the way through. And when I say ‘dad jokes’ of course, I really mean excruciatingly brilliant puns which endeared me to his character no end. Yep, this film is absolutely puntastic, it has to be said. Lines like “We’re heading into headhunter territory, which is a terrible place to be-headed.” are the best way to this cinema-goer’s heart, for sure and I think every movie should feature more lines like this.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a beautifully rendered alternative look at the ‘animated lines on a map’ style of giving the audience a geography fix and, about three quarters of the way through, an absolutely brilliant character reveal which ties one of the main characters into the shenanigans at the set up of the movie, going back all those hundreds of years. It’s really great stuff and even has a cute CGI leopard as Frank’s constant companion. Although... about that...

Okay, so there’s usually one thing wrong, at least, with a movie and sadly, like so many other modern film’s Achilles heel, it’s the CGI animals. None of the animals look really very good but, bearing in mind how much training and other tomfoolery you would have had to do with various creatures to satisfy the writing, I think it’s a fair trade off and you just have to suspend your disbelief for that element of the film.

And that’s me done on Jungle Cruise. It’s a short review of a long movie but, honestly, there’s not too much to say about it because it’s an absolutely perfect family fun adventure film which really captivates and entertains from beginning to end. I will absolutely be first in line to grab this when it comes out on Blu Ray so I can show it to my family on Christmas Eve this year. I loved it and would absolutely recommend this one to most people I know. 

The Commuter

Commuter Error

The Commuter
2018 UK/USA Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
UK cinema release print.

Well this movie is a pretty mixed bag, I would have to say. This is another one of those Liam Neeson action vehicles which I usually quite like the idea of, when they’re done right. However, my desire to see another of these was countered by the fact that I tend to find the director, Jaume Collet-Serra, way more miss than hit when it comes to making competent, interesting movies... even when they're headlining Neeson.

The Commuter has the benefit of an extraordinary cast supporting Neeson in his endeavours to find a person on a train using his ‘very special set of skills’... including the always stunning (and sadly underused here) Vera Farmiga, her 'on-screen husband' from The Conjuring films Patrick Wilson, Sam Neil (who I honestly never even recognised throughout the film with that worrying beard) and the even more memorable looking Jonathan Banks (from Beverly Hills Cop). And, as you would expect from such a professional cast... they all pull their weight, even when the script is weak in a lot of places.

Now, I have to say, there’s a lot of good stuff about this movie...

The opening title sequence, for example, which is a montage of Liam Neeson being awoken by his alarm, having household discussions with his family and then dropped off at the train station where he begins his morning commute into work, is built up from various different seasons and years to give a sense of the dogged routine Neeson’s character, Michael MacCauley, commits himself to... as well as building up a sense of familiarity in the audience as to various passengers on the train we’ll get to take a closer look at later.

There’s also the set pieces of suspense and action which are, for the most part, terrifically put together and not over edited... leaving them with a raw energy and sense of tension absent from some other movies in this kind of genre (this director’s movies included). It’s nail biting stuff and the sound design and effects for things like gunshots are extremely present in the mix and give an active appreciation of the implied danger the characters put themselves in.

Another plus is the superb score by Roque Banos, who really provides something that’s far from the humdrum noise I associate with a lot of action vehicles of this type, using strong melodic hooks that linger in the mind long after the movie has punched its last ticket (yeah, I’ll definitely be picking up the CD on this one when it eventually gets released). It’s also, surprisingly, well mixed into the foreground (at least on the IMAX set up I saw this on) and it really does hold its own against the noise of the blood and thunder extraordinarily well.

One last plus, for me, was the beautifully rendered end titles where the entire cast and crew list scrolls up and reveals itself to be designed like a train map, with various terminus stops and branch lines indicated, breaking off to usher in another section of the often ridiculously lengthy roll call of names that modern motion pictures seem to require. It’s good stuff and I’m all for it.

Unfortunately, there’s also some 'not so great' stuff here too...

The plot has been constructed almost like a Hitchcock mystery with added action scenes and, you can almost imagine Cary Grant or James Stewart performing in a slightly less adrenalised version of this film sometime in the 1950s. Alas, the script isn’t that great and the director manages to telegraph a lot of the little twists and turns well before they actually happen. Some of this is even revealed in the casting when you recognise a face and then wonder why they would have such a small role in the movie... with the answer to that being, of course they don’t... they’re the bad guy. So, yeah, there’s some bad stuff here.

Perhaps as bad is that the director, I suspect, seems to realise he’s stepping into Hitchcockian territory and sometimes does his best to play to that... in as unsubtle a manner as possible, I thought. As a ‘for instance’, there’s a scene where he uses that overly clichéd simultaneous zoom/push/pull effect from Vertigo (popularised by Spielberg’s use of the same technique in Jaws, somewhat) to highlight a plot point which the audience had surely guessed twenty minutes or so before and which, honestly, was so bluntly handled that I nearly burst out laughing in the cinema. Seriously, guys? I mean, I know people like to homage that shot but maybe it’s time it was left alone for a couple of decades now.

So yeah, perhaps there’s less to list on the bad side of things but it’s elements like this that are all pervasive and they do, in some ways, take a lot of the wind out of the sails on this particular movie. Still, it’s a lot better than Neeson and Collet-Serra’s Unknown (reviewed here)... so there’s that.

Ultimately, The Commuter is a likeable romp which is maybe somewhat less clever than the creative forces behind it might like to imagine but which is also quite competent and entertaining enough for a good night out at the cinema on a first watch. I have my doubts as to whether it would hold up under repeat viewings but, overall, the film is not terrible and, while I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it, it’s not a bad way to while away a couple of hours. Be warned, though... the Spartacus homage scene (you’ll know it when it happens) is probably going to make you groan.

The Shallows

Fin And Bare It

The Shallows
2016 USA Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very mild, shallow, mini moment spoilers lurking within.

The Shallows is a new movie about a great white shark and the carnage it wreaks in the shallow waters by a secret beach. As such, it’s bound to invite comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s great white shark opus, Jaws, and frankly, it’s a bit of a big movie to find yourself compared to. Not many movies are going to come out anywhere near as good as Jaws when you play the shark comparison game, including the Jaws’ sequels, and so The Shallows, as predicted, comes nowhere close to the level of that movie.

That being said, it has its own unique spin in that, apart from a few deaths, it is pretty much just a single woman, and a companionable seagull, fighting for life against the shark which has them trapped on a small island, just beyond a beach that hardly anybody knows about. There’s a lot which is good about the film and, it has to be said, a lot of that is to do with the central protagonist Nancy, and the strength of Blake Lively’s performance in this key role. However, I have to point out that it’s not a movie without a fair few problems, at least as I see them, and so I 'll quickly address those here.

The director uses a lot of 'in your face' close ups in this movie and it certainly does help to ratchet up the tension when Nancy finds herself in trouble. However, I don’t think the editing or coverage is all it should be here. Let me try and explain what I mean. There’s a shot early on when the camera is following Nancy fairly tightly... it’s not an extreme close up by any means but it’s certainly setting up the next to be an establishing shot of the beach that she has been driven to for the first five or ten minutes of the movie. Alas, although the next shot is, indeed, an establishing shot of the beach, it’s quite contrary to anything the audience is set up to be expecting... namely a POV shot from roughly where Nancy is standing. Instead, we get a sudden cut from a fairly slow, maybe even static shot of Nancy to a long, hurtling helicopter shot taking in the whole bay from a different direction. It kinda takes you by surprise and maybe that’s the point but, to be honest, I really don’t think it did the tone of the piece any favours in these early stages where you’re trying to con the audience into feeling comfortable within the space and try to get them to relate to the characters. So yeah, little artistic quirks like that can work quite well but here, I feel, it really didn’t.

Another thing in which I think Collet-Sera is maybe trying to push the boundaries of the regular syntax of the visual aspect of cinema too far is with constant shots inserted over the main canvass in order to convey personal information about the characters. For instance, as the movie starts, Nancy is being driven to the beach where she will eventually fight for survival and she’s flicking through her library of photos on her phone, pointing out certain things to the driver which, of course, are laying the foundations of certain sequences later in the film. Every time she flicks through a photo on screen, a third or so of the shot has an inset of what she is seeing on her phone, rotating through as she does this. Similarly, when she’s later skyping on the beach, the inserts of the ‘skype experience’ are inset, at some odd angles, into the picture. It’s very distracting. Especially when the shot cuts to a reverse and the inset is then just continued on a different part of the screen. I found it jarring and contrary to a naturally flowing movie experience, to be honest. As the film progresses, similar shots of Nancy’s watch are shown as inserts in to various parts of the screen. Now the director here is no Godard. He might well have been making a comment designed to pop you out of the movie so you can think about what you are seeing but, to be honest, it didn’t feel like that. It felt more like the director was trying to deliver information and, perhaps, the visual execution of this maybe didn’t work out so well. That’s how I felt about it anyway and, like I said, it's pretty distracting.

Another big problem is the amount of unbelievable, coincidental clichés found in this movie. Okay so... I guess if you’re going to be trapped on a very small piece of rock which is going to disappear under the tide at some point, you’d best make sure that your main protagonist is a trainee doctor so she can look after herself when she gets in trouble. And what are those unbelievably long earings she’s wearing? Who wears those? Could they, in fact, serve a dual survival purpose later on in the film by being that size and shape? Oh yeah... turns out it does come in mighty handily at some point in there so... yeah, all a bit too much of this kind of stuff, I thought.

There is, however, a great central performance in this film, as I said before, by Blake Lively. It’s a pretty intense performance and the actress manages to deliver something quite special here for what is, for most of the film, a one woman performance. Without giving too many spoilers away.... there’s a great scene where a guy on the beach can see that Nancy is trapped but he’s taking advantage of the situation rather than helping. However, when he goes to retrieve Nancy’s surf board from the ocean, he comes a cropper when the shark goes for him. Nancy does shout a warning to the guy as he swims out to her board but... and this is quite an obvious thing to happen at this fairly early stage of the movie... the guy is pretty much pulverised getting back to the beach. However, the camera does not actually show, at this point, what the shark is doing to the gentleman in question. Instead, it resorts to an old cinematic trick which is in no way necessary these days but which is, usually, much more effective. The camera instead decides to concentrate on all of Nancy’s reaction shots as she witnesses whatever our imaginations are believing to be happening and, I’m delighted to say, Lively plays this set of events with absolute believability, shock and nausea... for quite a while, it seems, until the camera deigns to show the gory punchline to the scene with the aftermath of the man in question. So, really, well done for her for being able to carry the weight of this film on her shoulders, despite the possibly deliberate but in no way less unsettling visual flourishes in which the director indulges.

The other star of this movie is the score by composer Marco Beltrami. Now I quite like a lot of Beltrami’s work anyway and although this eschews the classic, John Williams channels Korngold approach that the inevitable Jaws comparison may bring to mind, it’s not quite the modern, sound design meets atonality style of scoring you might expect the producers to plump for here. That being said, there is an ostinato used as a bass line in certain sequences near the end where Nancy and the shark are going head to head, so to speak, which is perhaps reminiscent of William’s famous two note motif for his great white shark score but, I honestly don’t know if that was a deliberate homage to the maestro or just my expectations of such making a connection with anything resembling a two note rhythm that was going to crop up here. Either way, it’s buried within the composition rather than being given its own voice as a dominating tone so, yeah, the music does its own thing and it’s pretty good and very supportive here. So top marks to Beltrami for doing something interesting, once again. Such a shame, then, that there seems to be no CD release for the score to this movie (nor any kind of release, it seems) as I would have liked to have heard this one away from the film it supports.

All in all, The Shallows is not a great film but it is fairly suspenseful and entertaining. Although a lot of the edge your seat thrills do involve the central protagonist pushing herself and doing things which the average human being night not be so stupid to even attempt (aka getting back in the water, while bleeding out and with a shark nearby), the ultimate result is that you may well be leaning forward in your seat at certain points (if you see it on a big enough screen) and holding your breath. Sure, it has its problems and I really wish the director had been less into the visual shenanigans with the various pieces of technology throughout the movie but it’s not a bad little piece if you want a ‘safe thrill’ from your cinema going experience. I wouldn’t go out of my way to either recommend it or warn against it... but if you find yourself circling the idea of the movie for long enough, maybe you might want to go in for a swim and take a bite.  

Run All Night

Running Up That Kill

Run All Night
2015  USA
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra 
UK cinema release print.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that this new movie starring Liam Neeson is a bit of a hard boiled action thriller. He’s done quite a few of these kinds of projects now, since his deservedly popular role in the first Taken movie, but to be honest, the films he’s been doing in this mode are always fairly hit and miss and the kinds of roles he’s been taking have become something of a cliché, to be honest. That’s possibly because he’s so credible in these kinds of roles, I expect. That being said, though, I sincerely hope he doesn’t abandon these roles too soon, before he has a chance to do a couple of sequels to the excellent A Walk Among The Tombstones (reviewed by me here) at least.

Run All Night is his third film for director Jaume Collet-Serra, following his work with him on the lamentably awful Unknown (reviewed here) and the surprisingly enjoyable Non Stop (reviewed here). I’m happy to report that, of the three films he’s done with this director, Run All Night is by far the superior movie to the other two, being both immensely enjoyable and actually making sense and following through on its own internal logic... something which I feel Unknown was not quite able to do. It’s also quite a gritty, anti-hero role that the always watchable and talented Neeson brings to life in this movie and it’s usually quite fun to watch the actor tap into his dark side for this kind of part.

The film centres on Neeson’s character Jimmy Conlon, who is a washed up killer for the mob, headed up by the ageing Shawn Maguire, played by the always brilliant Ed Harris. The film concerns the way these two veteran hard men deal with their relationship with each other after Conlon has to shoot Maguire’s son, played by Boyd Holbrook, in order to stop him from killing Conlon’s own, very estranged son, played by Joel Kinnaman. The film then becomes a bit of an action fest as Conlon does his best to keep his son, who hates him, and his son’s family, out of harms way as Maguire goes all out to settle the score.

And, yeah, there’s action galore and it’s all very well handled because it’s treated in quite an “in your face” kind of manner with loud gunshots that spell out ugly death. It doesn’t try to turn the violence into too much of a kind of kinetic ballet as some films choose to do (rightly or wrongly and for whatever artistic reasons) and instead lets you really feel the suspense and danger inherent in the situations portrayed on the screen.

What the film really has going for it, though, is the dramatic undercurrent of the ageing Neeson and Harris both trying to survive in a world that’s moved on from their old school ways of doing things. Both thrust back into an incident where those exact kinds of brutal methods are what they are now having to embrace again to come to terms with, and try to survive, their current situation. And all of this is bolstered with the subtext of Neeson’s son having to trust his father and the possibility of Jimmy Conlon’s partial redemption in his son’s eyes... or at least his acceptance. And, frankly, when you have actors in a movie who are as good as this... it’s rare that they’re not going to deliver the goods in terms of the emotional weight required. They certainly all do an excellent job here.

Now, I really hate to use the clichéd critical term that the movie is a bit of a roller coaster ride... but even if that phrase outstayed its welcome almost before critics started applying it to every mildly kinetic action movie possible, the truth is that this film certainly lives up to this phrase in terms of pacing and it really does whizz along quite quickly... although the actual arc is relatively slowly set up. Nevertheless it’s shot in such a way that the build up itself is hurtling along at quite a breakneck speed and you’re not going to find yourself yawning or checking your watch at any time throughout this movie, I suspect.

That being said, though, my one negative criticism of the movie is that the editing style was quite aggressive all the way through the picture. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some lovely transitions in this movie, and some nice use of sped up cityscape zooms and transitions to get you arriving at the next sequence, but I would have to say that the average shot length in this movie, which also has quite a lot of moving camera in it, is probably only a few seconds. Even the scenes which shout out for a slower treatment, like rambly conversations between main characters, seem to be cursed with being made up of lots of little alternate angles and edits when, perhaps, it might have been better to let some of these scenes play out more in their master shots, rather than try and speed them up with constant cutting.

Even so, though, if you can handle that spin on the pacing solution, which I guess is one way to keep things moving, then you should certainly have a good time with this one. There’s a lot to like in it. It rarely gets confusing, even with all the aggressive editing, so that’s also a big bonus on this one... especially during the jumpy, fighty, chasy, shooty sequences.

One thing I would like to take a minute to shout out on this one is the excellent score by a composer called Tom Holkenborg, otherwise known as Junkie XL. Now, I’ve got his music to the second of the 300 movies (reviewed here) and I have to say that I thought that was an okay score... although I’ve noticed on various film music message boards that there seems to be a general rejection, in some quarters, concerning this guy’s music... and I don’t know why this is. Now, I don’t know how this score will stand up as a stand alone listen (although I’ve ordered a copy of the CD from the US so I hope to be able to make a judgement on that in a few weeks) but the way it works in this movie is pretty good. There is a strong melody line, almost but not quite a leitmotif approach, which plays out for Neeson’s character and it’s mixed in with typical but immensely listenable and supporting modern action scoring. Here’s the thing, though... it’s also very well spotted...

That is to say, just like masters of the craft such as Jerry Goldsmith, the places where it’s been chosen to either have music or not, is quite well thought out and effectively followed through. To use an example of another master Hollywood composer, think about the pod racing scene in John Williams’ score for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (reviewed here). Once the race scene starts, the music is killed off in its entirety for almost the full duration of the race, allowing the sound effects to take over and present a more raw experience, with Williams only bringing in his score towards the end of the sequence to bolster a specific incident and its repercussions on the outcome of the race. In Run All Night, Junkie-XL does a similar thing with a high impact car chase... leaving it almost completely unscored until near the end of the sequence where he suddenly (and wisely in terms of orchestration) starts bringing in some percussion to top off the action and then bring you back into the sound world of the film afterwards... very nicely done. I think this guy is probably a fairly skilled composer and I think the soundtrack community should give him more of a chance, to be fair.

And that, I think, is all I got to say about Run All Night. Well shot, nicely lit, beautiful acting, appropriately handled scoring but a bit jarring on the eyes in some places due to what I feel is maybe a little bit of a case of overenthusiastic editing. If you’re a fan of Neeson’s action movies, though, then this one is certainly one of the better, not to mention most credible, of those... so you shouldn’t have any worries about giving this one a go and you probably won’t want to pass this one up... even if I stooped to calling it a roller coaster. Embrace the cliché.