At times we all pine for the old days. What constitutes the "old days" depends on your point of view - and your age - and the cinematic fare you grow up with can define your movie taste for life, even if those movies are, ahem, less than classic.
Walk Among The Tombstones is an old school movie that boldly attempts to take a 'classic' movie trope - the ex-cop private eye solves a mystery and saves his soul - and drag it's dismembered corpse out of the lake of history and into the multiplexes. It's a low budget, mid-80's dark thriller shot as a mid-budget retro-revenge chiller, it's still angles and long shots echoing a bygone era but its sharp movement and lush lensing as modern as any blockbuster.
Liam Neeson is the personification of this old meets new, young and strong enough to convince as someone who can hold his own, mature enough to fit the worn down PI trench coat, which he deftly does. The dialogue is slow, and occasionally over explanatory, but it suits and sits well within itself. It is a slow burner, and takes patience, and is routinely deadly and disturbing, unafraid to go to gore when needed.
It is flawed in a number of respects - Neeson follows leads to find further information without ever having found the initial lead in the first place; he is the worst PI in movie history, constantly getting one-upped and missing obvious clues; sometimes it is far too slow; Dan Stevens as the drug dealer who's wife has been offed is the best thing about it and in it nowhere near enough - but has enough going for it to forgive these indescretions. It is unrelentingly brutal at times, the ending is satisfying and any movie with a rooftop pidgeon coup conversation is good in my book.
It may not be ground breaking, but it could teach a few new dogs some old tricks.
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