I’m not of the opinion that Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Run All Night (Warner Bros., 3.13) is second-rate crap — it is second-rate crap. Just as I knew that Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop was a second-rate airborne thriller, and that Scott Frank‘s A Walk Among The Tombstones was and is pretty close to gold-standard urban noir. Each of these films stars Liam “back to being a paycheck whore” Neeson, and you can bet that Neeson recognizes, along with most discriminating movie fans, that Frank’s film is far superior to the other two. I toughed it out during last night’s Grove screening until almost the very end, and then I said “fuck this” and got up and walked into a nearby book store. I had to. I was feeling icky and soiled and exhausted.
I hate the darting-and-swooping videogame CG shots that Collet-Sera uses to roam around New York City with, and I despise his atrocious disregard for action logic, particularly during an idiotic, flim-flammy, speeding-bumper-car scene in Brooklyn that totally alienated me. I also hate the faithless, Philistine way Collet-Saura directs fight scenes, particularly how he never actually shows anyone getting punched (he always cuts away a half-second before the moment of impact) and the way his guys always groan each and every time they get slugged. (Will you take a punch like a man just once?) There wasn’t anywhere near as much action in J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year, but when it happened you believed each and every frame of it. It was glorious for that.