The Hebrew Bible allows the offended to
take ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’ but that is intended to be the limit of just recompense. We may only take an eye for an eye, only a tooth for a tooth.
One definition of the word ‘taken’ in the Oxford
Reference Dictionary is ‘to have
sexual intercourse with’.
When I saw Liam Neeson’s 2009 film
Taken I felt that I had been taken, in the most unwelcome way.
I could use a shorter, blunter, word.
I also felt taken advantage of, taken in, taken down, and if it came to taking or leaving it I was sure what my choice
would be. Taken sickened me not because of its depiction of violence, but for its approval of
it. I have written at
length about my severe discomfort at the way modern cinema promotes
vengeance as a morally justified activity, and gives it’s
protagonists unlimited license to maim and kill anyone who gets in the way of
exacting such vengeance. (See Taken for a ride, below). Taken, produced and co-written by Luc Besson,
directed by Pierre Morel, starring Neeson as Brian
Mills, the ex-CIA agent trying to rescue his teenage daughter from Middle
Eastern kidnappers, epitomised this genre, and was so well made – thanks to
Morel – that it became very popular.
I was not pleased with Neeson for lending his presence and
credibility to it, or saying such lines as this internet favourite quote
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If
you're looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money but what I do have
are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long
career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my
daughter go now, that will be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you
don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.
I
wonder how many misguided teenage boys have learnt those line and growled them into their bedroom mirrors,
thinking they were the quintessence of manliness? And these words came out of
the mouth of the man who once played Schindler! One NY Times critic asked The conundrum posed by
“Taken” is as old as cinema itself. Do stars degrade themselves when they take
a role in trash, or does their very presence? This
appeared to be a rhetorical question. I understand that Taken
2 was in some ways less meretricious. It was also, of course, less
popular.
And so I rejoice at the release of
Neeson’s latest film, A Walk among the Tombstones.
It is adapted from one of Laurence Bloch’s 'Matthew Scudder' novels. There have been over a
dozen books featuring this New York Private Eye (unlicensed), an alcoholic ex-cop. The tone of the books could
be judged by the titles. The first
two, back in the 1970’s, were The Sins of the Fathers and In the Midst of Death. The titles that followed contained the
words or phrases Murder, Stab, Die, Cutting Edge, Eight Million Ways To Die, Boneyard, Slaughter House,
Dead Men, Everybody Dies, and Hope to Die. But these dark
books are also credited with depth and nuance.
They are not Micky Spillane celebrations of violence and misogyny. Matt Scudder has the kind of integrity once found in
Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, both of whom are name-checked (somewhat clumsily)
in A Walk Among the Tombstones.
In 1986
Oliver Stone co-scripted and produced Eight Million Ways To Die, directed by Hal Ashby, with Jeff
Bridges playing
Matt Stutter. I did not see it, but apparently it did
not work well. In the New York Times Walter
Goodman asked How did ''Eight Million
Ways to Die'' commit suicide?
But
A Walk Among The Tombstones works much better. It had Frank Scott at the helm, and he also
adapted the novel for the screen.
Scott has an impressive record, having written
or adapted Little Man Tate, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, The
Interpreter, The Wolverine and Minority Report. This is first full length movie, although he was 2nd unit director
(uncredited) for the Minority Report . But
combining script-writer and director works well here, giving us an evenness of
tone and a cohesion of plot.
The
villains, played by David Harbour and Adam David Thompson, are clearly insane,
but theirs is a cold implacable madness rather than scenery-chewing eyeball-rolling and they are all the more frightening for that. The plot revolves around their sadistic murders of
women, but these killings are
mainly off screen, showing us instead the terrified vulnerability of the victims and are in no way exploitive.
The gradual disclosures of plot
and character are well paced, and in the inevitable and shockingly violent
finale Scott bravely cuts into the action with sequences reiterating the AA’s
12 steps, the road to Scutter’s recovery and his spiritual discipline. This has troubled some
reviewers, but in the Bloch novels the AA plays an important and recurring
role, and Scott has been true to his source. The climax is for Scutter as much spiritual –
challenging his values - as
physical. Neeson is so well
cast here. His Scutter is
tough but vulnerable, humane
but world-weary. When a killer has
him at gun-point and asks Why aren’t you afraid? he answers I
don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t
matter much to me whether I live or die,
and I
for one believed him.
Scott has cut the gum-shoe’s girlfriend,
who in the novel is a prostitute, from the script, but kept Scutter’s
teenage side-kick TJ, a smart homeless black kid, played by Brian “Astro” Bradley, who
wants to be a PI himself.
When TJ first appeared I wondered what this familiar and sentimental
trope was doing in so tough a movie, but his inclusion is justified when he
plays a crucial part in the plot.
The gritty photography by Mihai Malaimare Jn. and music by Carlos Rafael Rivera (both relatively newcomers to Hollywood) complement the
style beautifully, showing once again that noir
does not have to be shot in black and white and scored with jazz. Dan Stevens, Eric
Nelsen and Olafur Darri Olafsson provide solid acting support, helped by believable lines of dialogue. It has been said that Emily Blunt brings
out the best in good actors (see Looper, The Adjustment Bureau and Edge of Tomorrow),
and maybe Liam Neeson has the same gift.
This is not a perfect movie, it spends a
little too much time on inessentials, sometimes lapses towards sentimentality,
and may tell us more than we need to know about its villains, but at its heart is Matt Scutter. He is a thinking man with a
soul, and this is a thinking movie with a soul. I think it gave Neeson his best script for 20 years, since the days of Schindler's List, Rob Roy and Michael Collins. I would very much like to see more films with him embodying
the role. Mr. Neelson;
all is (almost) forgiven.
