Neeson's 'Tombstones': Mis-Taken

IN HIS LATEST, Liam Neeson is again tracking men who kidnap and abuse women. The movie, though, is a mostly a bore.

There should be a name for these misfires: "Mis-Taken."

The actual title here is "A Walk Among the Tombstones," a dull and sleazy actioner featuring Neeson as a sobered-up ex-cop named Matt Scudder who helps a drug dealer find the creeps who kidnapped and murdered his wife, and are doing the same to other dealers.

Even the opening credit sequence is gross - two naked drooling weirdos lolling about with a terrified, bound, weeping woman. It looks like a perfume ad that ISIS might have shot for Calvin Klein.

So, the movie feels odious from the get-go, yet is somehow dull at the same time, thanks in part to the way the story is told.

Case in point: The dealer (Dan Stevens) tries to hire Scudder, who demurs. What's the point of these playing-hard-to-get, find-somebody-else scenes? We know he's going to take the case, we know there'd be no movie without it, so let's cut the b.s.

Meanwhile, the slow-moving narrative takes frequent breaks to show us flashbacks to Scudder's scandalous days as a drunken, loose-cannon detective, shooting recklessly at thugs in the street.

Most of these flashbacks are spliced together with Scudder's appearances at AA meetings, leading to a weird scene of Scudder taking care of bad guys while, via voiceover, he recites the words to all 12 steps.

References to a higher power make it appear as though Scudder is doing God's work as he tasers guys in the groin and beats them bloody.

And everyone seems to accept this, even the cops called to the scene of the carnage, willing to overlook the thousand or so civil and criminal laws that this unlicensed PI has violated during his two-fisted investigation.

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