A Walk Among the Tombstones

The year is 1999 – yes, there are a lot of Y2K jokes here – and former NYPD officer Matt Scudder (Liam Neeson) is now an unlicensed private investigator. As he puts it, “sometimes I do favours for people, sometimes they give me gifts”. So when a man (Boyd Holbrook) from one of his AA meetings says his brother Kenny (Dan Stevens) wants his help, Matt goes along. It turns out Kenny is a big-time drug dealer (“trafficker” is how he prefers to be known) whose wife was recently kidnapped. Kenny paid the ransom; they sent her home in pieces. Now Kenny wants Scudder to find them and hand them over – alive.
Superficial similarities aside, there’s a lot more going on here than in the usual run of Neeson’s action films. For one thing, this is based on one of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder detective novels (it’s actually one of the middle ones, but the film brings things up to speed without a blip), so there’s a lot more depth to the characters – and a lot more development of the mystery – going on (even Scudder’s friendship with a computer savvy street kid named TJ – played by Brian Bradley – doesn’t feel as corny as it could have).
The big strength of this film above and beyond Scudder himself is the atmosphere; this is a dour film set on bleak streets where every day feels like a struggle, and it gives the already grim story (while the film is never exploitative, it’s still about women being cut up, and the gruesome nature of the crimes affects everyone in this film) a real sense of doom. The mystery isn’t much of a head-scratcher, but it doesn’t need to be: this is a film about characters and the sad world they inhabit, and it’s a gripping look at both.
This is Neeson’s best film in a while. It’d be a real shame if the poor US box office for it meant we didn’t get any further instalments in this series.