A Walk Among the
Tombstones
Director: Scott Frank
Year: 2014
Rating: 7.0
While I was watching this, I was under the impression
that it had been produced in the 1990s because it had none of the flash,
glitz, sizzle, over the top action and rapid editing that goes on in the
criminal suspense films of today. It is actually the film that is set in
the 1990s but made in 2014. It is a grim dark tense portrait of a private
eye and the killers he is after. It is in some ways plodding but good plodding
as the viewer follows the private eye step by step in his investigation.
At one point he is asked what makes a good detective; he responds patience
and a large bladder. He begins with nothing other than a heinous murder and
slowly works his way towards the perpetrators.
The P.I. is Matthew Scudder, based on a
series of over twenty-novels by Lawrence Block from the mid-1970s to 2023.
I read a bunch of them a few decades ago and thought they were terrific.
His Scudder is a tough ex-cop who quit the force after accidentally killing
a young girl in a shoot-out after he had been drinking. He is an alcoholic,
now cleaned up attending AA meetings. So was Block and Scudder's alcoholism
and the AA are a central part of the story and of Scudder - it is part of
the life of an alcoholic. Part of Block's life. Scudder is an unlicensed
private eye - when he meets new clients he tells them - I do favors for you,
you give me a gift in return.
This is only the second film based on the
books - the other being 8 Million Ways to Die - which is kind of surprising
with so many tough guys getting the TV treatment lately - Reacher, Bosch.
The books may be too complicated and morally gray for TV. His girlfriend
in the books through much of the series is a prostitute. Like every good
detective, he has a moral code that he sticks to. He doesn’t have much, but
he has that. Staying sober and true are his goals in life. The books and
this film are set in New York City; the streets, abandoned tenements, corner
bodegas and graveyards are part of the realistic and gritty picture that
Block draws. Scudder fits right in. He is played by Liam Neeson who was in
the middle of his older tough guy roles. He gets Scudder just right. Never
a word more spoken than needs to be and weighed down by age and guilt. And
a sense of justice. And right and wrong.
One of his fellow AA meeting attendees asks
Scudder whether he can see his brother Kenny (Dan Stevens) about a problem
he has. Kenny lives in a large Brooklyn brownstone apartment that smells
of money and it takes Scudder about two minutes to guess correctly that he
is a drug trafficker. But that isn’t the problem. His dead wife is. She was
kidnapped and though he paid the ransom of $400,000 in cash, she came back
in pieces. He wants Scudder to just find them and then leave it up to him.
Not Scudder’s type of case really but the man begs him and plays an audio
tape the men left with the body – of them sexually torturing her before killing
her. That persuades him and the slow chase begins. The killers are a sick
bunch and Scudder figures this is not the first time for them. With
the help of a black homeless teenager (Astro), his research shows other similar
cases and that is where the trail begins. The two psycho killers are played
by David Harbour (Stranger Things) and Adam David Thompson and their scenes
with the captured women make you want to give your butcher knife some exercise.
The director Scott Frank (Monsieur Spade) keeps the film moving but never
rushed.
