If A Walk Among the Tombstones feels familiar, it’s because it very much is.
A variation of this film opened a couple weeks ago under the name The November Man and lead actor/only recognizable actor in this film Liam Neeson has made something remarkably close to this movie under three different aliases: Taken, Non-Stop and Unknown. Just be thankful that this iteration got more than a one-word title, even though it’s a one-note action-thriller that ultimately disappoints.
Set in 1999, Neeson stars as Matt Scudder, a former cop turned unlicensed private eye. He’s a recovering alcoholic that lives in a sad, divorced/widowed person’s apartment building who isn’t keen on technology – he doesn’t have a cell phone and still uses a microfiche at the library. The fact that few people under the age of 30 probably know what a microfiche is explains a lot.
He’s hired by a drug trafficker – not a drug dealer, as the character clarifies – to find the psychopath tag team that kidnapped, killed and mutilated his wife. Turns out, they’ve done this a couple other times to other drug traffickers because those guys have lots of money to pay for the supposed safe return of their loved ones. He’s aided in this venture by a homeless kid named TJ whom he meets at the library because that’s where homeless kids with a talent fro drawing hang out when it’s raining…
Ultimately, Tombstones is just Neeson’s “don’t take no shhhh” gruff action character repackaged in a slightly different role from all the other times he’s been this guy. The names are different but the story remains the same: he’s a bad ass and you don’t want to run afoul of him, even if you’re a pair of craziest picking off the family members of drug dealers because he’ll hunt you down and use his particular set of skills… wait, that’s Taken.
And Unknown.
And Non-Stop: Taken on a Plane.
And A Walk Among the Tombstones.
This was fun the first time around but like everything in Hollywood, they’ve gone to the well five or six too many times and destroyed it forever.
Until it gets rebooted 20 years in the future with Jake Gyllenhaal.
