Humdrum narrative

No, don’t go by the title. ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’ is hardly what it seems. In the first place Liam Neeson is scarcely a good substitute for Harrison Ford. Then director-scriptwriter Scott Frank has taken liberties with Laurence Black’s novel of the same name and changed it for the worse.

The story is centred on Martin Scudder (Liam Neeson); a former NYPD cop who is also a reformed alcoholic. He is hired by a drug dealer Karny Kristo (Dan Stevens) to find his kidnapped wife; it doesn’t make things any better. Fighting his own demons seems a full-time job.

But he battles on nevertheless. Scudder runs into cute black punk TJ (Brian Astro Bradley) who with the best lines lights up the screen in an otherwise humdrum narrative. Frank then comes up with a voice-over of the 12 Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) steps which needlessly affects the flow (hardly the correct word).

The three women killed by the kidnappers (David Harbor & Adam David) are shown off screen but then Frank delves into needless but gory details --- like having their limbs put in plastic bags and allowed to float in the river.

But sadly the story drags on for 113 long minutes. And that too quite predictably. There is nothing about the acting too and rarely has Liam Neeson done well in the lead roles. He is always struggling but young Brian Astro Bradley show promise in this avoidable pot-boiler.