Liam Neeson shooting people. If that sounds like a familiar premise for a film, it's for good reason. Over the last seven years, ever since Neeson surprised everyone with the solid action film, "Taken," it seems to be the only type of movie the once respected actor has made. A man who was once nominated for an Oscar for his performance in "Schindler's List" has since built a generic filmography that makes him more or less a walking joke. Seemingly every film, from "Taken" to last year's "Non-Stop" follows the same at-this-point worn-down formula, with each film becoming more of a slog than the last. "Run All Night" could be the worst one yet, as it simply goes through the motions without doing much of anything particularly interesting.
Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, a mobster who finds himself in a precarious situation with his boss after, through some of the most contrived circumstances I've ever seen in a major motion picture, he ends up shooting his son. Once friends, that boss, played by Ed Harris, is now an enemy and plans on making him feel the same hurt by taking his own son, Mike, played by Joel Kinnaman, away from him. Naturally, Jimmy will do anything to prevent that from happening, which leads to one long night of shootouts and chases.
And I mean loooong night. Not since last year's "Transformers: Age of Extinction" has a movie been so unnecessarily long in relation to the complexity, or lack thereof, of its story. Thankfully, "Run All Night" isn't quite as long as that movie, as it clocks in at roughly two hours, but it feels about the same. Characterization and emotion is minimal, though the film tries to create some of both with amateur screenplay tactics - Mike is estranged from Jimmy, meaning he has never met his own grandkids, all the while he's freezing in his home because the poor guy can't afford to fix his heater, etc. - so there's very little grab onto here. In fact, it's one of those rare films where I was actually rooting for the supposed "good guy" to lose.
You see, despite attempts to make Jimmy a likable character, his introduction shows him as the boorish pig he is, as he dresses up as Santa, gets drunk, treats the kids around him poorly and then proceeds to speak to an attractive woman in what can only be described as sexually abusive language. The introduction to this character is so bad that it leaves a lasting impression that later acts of goodwill fail to reverse, though even if it did, a late film reveal shows the true cowardice and selfishness of his personality.
Meanwhile, his boss, Shawn, shows empathy and even a tinge of regret. When he turns down a business deal with a local drug dealer trying to peddle heroine, he explains it's because when he did something similar in his younger, more naïve days, it led to too much hardship, as those he loved became hooked on it and he lost them all. He's still a bad guy, of course, and has most certainly done or ordered people to do worse things than Jimmy, but the film, perhaps unintentionally, paints him in a better light than the supposed hero.
Simply put, "Run All Night" has everything backwards and its tepid action does little to hide that fact. Its action is accompanied by few truly heart racing moments and lots of far-too-dark cinematography, occasionally aggressive close-ups and shaky cam and shot reverse shot shootouts. It feels very much like action filmmaking 101, like what an amateur filmmaker without the experience to truly know what he or she is doing would produce if given millions of dollars to toy with.