Run All Night (2015) * * *

Directed by:  Jaime Collet-Serra

Starring: Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Common, Bruce McGill, Boyd Holbrook, Genesis Rodriguez, Vincent D'Onofrio

I know what you're thinking, because it was the same thing I was thinking.   I saw the trailers.   Here's yet another movie where Liam Neeson carries a gun and kills a dozen people with the energy and skill of a man half his age.    Will Run All Night be a Taken 4?   Or a Non-Stop 2?   Neeson these days could be an honorary NRA president.    To my relief, Run All Night is not simply mindless action.    It is grounded in depth, shadows, and characters who are forced to make tough moral choices.    I enjoy movies where situations and decisions are not black and white.    Neeson's Jimmy Conlon isn't a good man forced to protect his son from an evil villain.    The trailers make it appear that way.   In fact, Conlon isn't a good man at all.    He is an alcoholic mob enforcer haunted by his wicked deeds who has left a trail of bodies and broken lives in his wake.    His nemesis is his boss and best friend Shawn Maguire (Harris), who is attempting late in life to go legit, but finds it difficult when his son brings Albanians to the table wanting to put together a lucrative heroin deal.

Run All Night has its share of chases and shootouts to be sure, but the characters and performances carry the film.     The day doesn't start well for Jimmy, who wakes up hung over in a bar and is laughed at by onlookers.    He stumbles downstairs, begging to borrow money from Shawn's son Danny (Holbrook), who is forever trying to push into the big time as a career criminal and impress his father at the same time.     Danny agrees to the loan, but forces Jimmy to play Santa Claus at Shawn's Christmas party.    Jimmy once was Shawn's right-hand man.    How the mighty have fallen. 

Jimmy's son Michael (Kinnaman) is worlds apart from Danny.    Michael has cut his father out of his life.     His children nor his wife ever met Jimmy.     Michael provides for his family as an honest limo driver who has the misfortune of picking up the Albanians as clients.     The Albanians travel to Danny's house and Michael is a suddenly a witness to a murder and on the run from Danny.    This leads to unfortunate consequences in which Danny is killed and thus both Jimmy and Michael are reluctantly on the run together from Shawn.     Shawn also hires a Terminator-like hitman named Price (Common), who wears glasses and stalks his targets relentlessly. 

You think you know how things will play out, but Run All Night pulls subtle surprises.    The history and friendship between Jimmy and Shawn is felt in nearly all of their scenes.    Shawn knows he must avenge Danny's death, but wishes it wasn't Jimmy he was hunting.    Jimmy is trying to pull himself together for one last rally and one last shot at love from his angry son.     Jimmy and Shawn's final showdown is very poignant, just watch Shawn and Jimmy's body language here and you learn all you need to know about their feelings toward each other. 

Also lurking in the mix and on Jimmy's tail is Detective Harding (D'Onofrio), who has forever been trying to pin murders of 17 underworld figures on Jimmy.    One of these murders is of special significance to Jimmy, which is what fuels his drunken, sleepless nights.    Michael certainly has legitimate reasons to be angry with his father, but he learns that perhaps he wasn't entirely right about him.    The film does this without going the overly sentimental route. 

Run All Night is full of complex performances of people who now have to sleep in the beds they made, especially Jimmy and Shawn.    Neeson and Harris turn what could've been trite retread characters into originals.    There are two scenes which reminded me of Road To Perdition, where Tom Hanks played a mob enforcer attempted to shield his profession from his family.    The difference between Hanks' enforcer and Neeson's is that Hanks' drank less.