Mobster hit man (but likable guy) Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) has one night to figure out what to do next.  The film opens on Neeson lying in the woods saying he’s done terrible things in his life, and that when we die, life doesn’t just flash before us, but instead memories stir regrets.  The story fades to sixteen hours earlier…

Apparently Neeson was best friends with Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) but when a situation involves their two sons, Danny and Mike (Boyd Hollbrook and Joel Kinnaman respectively)  no one is certain of what really matters.  Or where alliances lie.  With the story’s father/son undertones the film feels like Beyond the Pines meets Taken. So we’re immediately ‘taken’ ourselves, and soon we’re off and running, chomping our popcorn.

But at a certain point it turns a shame…the plot sours into a stupid twist when Harris’s behavior takes an unexpected turn (and basically dispels/betrays all that he spoke of earlier in the story.) Without going into detail, the film becomes Neeson’s – because we have nobody else to hold onto and maybe that’s a good thing. Neeson takes a movie that derails, puts it somehow back on track, and proves that a bad plot and lousy dialog can be saved by Neeson’s star power.

I suspect if you’re going to have a doting father, you’d want it to be Liam Neeson anyway.

Vincent D’Onofrio gives a stable performance as the detective, and the director thinks he’s a Christopher Nolan rip-off, but in the end it’s highly entertaining and somehow oddly works. You’ll leave the theatre trying to figure out why you actually liked it.   ♕ ♚ ♛