Run All Night stars Liam Neeson, Genesis Rodriguez, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent D’Onofrio and Ed Harris. Run All Night was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra who some may know for his work on other Liam Neeson films such as Non-Stop (2014) and Unknown (2011).
Run All Night Trailer
The entire plot of Run All Night takes place over the course of an entire night and then a bit of the next day. It’s a good contained film which begins and ends quickly with a lot of action to be seen in the middle. What’s happening in this film is that Liam Neeson’s character, Jimmy, has killed the son of one of his best friends and crime boss, Shawn (Ed Harris). Shawn vows revenge on Jimmy and his son Mike (Joel Kinnaman) for killing his son and over the course the night unleashes a whole range of goons who try and kill them both. It’s kind of fairly standard action film type of storytelling but I think it works for the most part.
I think most people are really going in to see this film because it has Liam Neeson in it and he’s been really awesome lately in a lot of similar action films and it’s the reason I was excited to see it as well. I think Liam Neeson totally delivers with his performance in this, but for some he may appear similar to a lot of other movies and isn’t anything new or different. But he’s still really enjoyable to watch and I loved it. Run All Night is a bit darker than some recent Liam Neeson films though and isn’t as light as something like Taken 3 or Non-Stop, it’s not as dark as A Walk Among The Tombstones though, which I think is my favourite of the recent batch of films he’s been in.
I did think that the story in Run All Night had a good build up with the murdered son being given a bit of a story before we see him killed, which provides good context. But Joel Kinnaman’s character of Mike was a bit whiny all the way through this. I felt that maybe he could have been better written as he seemed to be really hesitant towards his father (with good reason) but he just never really became a fully rounded character and that was a bit disappointing. I don’t mind Joel Kinnaman and I did enjoy him last year in Robocop but I didn’t think he added much to this movie and was a bit of a waste.
Ed Harris was a great villain in this and I really would have loved to have seen more of him. There’s a scene where he he meets Liam Neeson’s character in a restaurant and the two have a chat which was great and all his scenes were really good, I think opposite Liam Neeson he did well. Common who plays a hitman has some presence in this as well as another villain and he’s good in the action scenes, he never really said much at all and looking back at his character, I now think that while it looked cool at first, his laser gun is a bit goofy really. I also really enjoyed Vincent D’Onofrio’s appearance and Genesis Rodriguez was good to, but these last three actors I mentioned are all fairly minor characters in Run All Night.
The directing in this film is good for what it is, I do like the movies that Jaume Collet-Serra has made and this one isn’t different much to ones like Non-Stop or Unknown. Although I think I enjoyed Unknown more than this and the tension in Non-Stop was a bit better than the tension in Run All Night (although the ending in Run All Night I think puts it ahead of Non-Stop). Run All Night is very entertaining but I think it’s just Joel Kinnaman’s character that holds this back really and it’s most likely due to the screenplay than anything else. Run All Night has these zoom shots where when changing scenes we zoom out above the city and then down onto the characters, kind of like when you change characters in GTAV. I thought it was good because it feels like there’s a lot going on at once and the film’s pacing was very quick and felt like it went by really quickly.
The action sequences are all well shot and are intense at times, we see Liam Neeson at what he does best and Run All Night isn’t the jump cut adventure that Taken 3 was, which makes things better to watch. It doesn’t have the biggest budget for the best action scenes of all time here but I think there’s good value from what you do get. There’s car chases, gun scenes and fight scenes which means you get a bit of everything.
Run All Night – Car Chase Scene
Overall Run All Night is a decent action film with a great performance from Liam Neeson. I think anyone going in to see this who loves these types of action films or is a fan of Liam Neeson will definitely enjoy watching Run All Night. The actors all do a great job and Ed Harris was a good villain opposite Liam Neeson. The movie falls down a bit with the characterisation of Mike (Joel Kinnaman) but as an action film story it’s still fairly entertaining to watch.
