A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) Review

A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

A Walk Among the Tombstones follows former cop Matt Scudder, who is hired by a drug dealer to find the men who kidnapped and brutally murdered his wife, descending into a cat and mouse game that blurs the lines between lawful and criminal the deeper he goes. 

This unnerving return to the neo-noir genre has enthralled me for a few years now. A modern return to a genre of old that we don’t get much anymore, Tombstones weirdly wasn’t a hit with fans and critics alike. Which I find so odd because I loved it then and really love it now. Set on the crumbling streets of New York in 1999 (right before the Y2K scare), it immediately creates an ambiance that is conducive to darkly horrible shit. The way it fleshes out Scutter’s world-weary intelligence, while highlighting the obvious dark bits of his past rival old pulp novels, as he walks around unraveling this bone chilling mystery in each of it’s gut wrenching details. 

What really differentiates this from most thrillers (and more notably, most Neeson action flicks) though, is how it goes about developing Scudder. It introspectively ponders how his spirituality and morals will hold up against the inexplicable evil of these monumental killers. The way it anchors his present to the tragedies of his past creates a dark aura around the final act on whether he’ll do the right thing and walk away or commit the vengeful obligation after everything they put those women through. One of the few movies in recent memory that really asks the viewer to be concerned with the soul of our protagonist as he fights evil inside and out. 

We get an excellent cast as well, featuring Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Stevens, Adam David Thompson, Brian Bradley , David Harbour, and Liam Neeson. In my opinion, this is some of Neeson’s finest work to date, as this role is very natural and plays to those really dark characters he’s good at, without pushing the boundaries of what’s believable. Harbour (in the first thing I saw him in) is also pretty fucking terrifying, possessing all of the weird and quirky characteristics of an unlikely serial killer. 

Based on the book by Lawrence Block, A Walk Among the Tombstones, directed by Scott Frank, is a bleak and somber affair that works on so many levels, but whose darkness really lets it stand out, bordering on sub-human horror at some points, in this riveting, slow burn thriller. 

9.1/10