TheMarwood

A Walk Among the Tombstones has been in various stages of development since the late 90's and while it's a decent enough film, it's hard to see what kept this story on the development back burner for almost two decades and not simply just forgotten about. It's a pulpy noir about an ex-cop turned private investigator, who is hired by a drug trafficker to find the two men who abducted his wife and chopped her into dozens of pieces after he paid the ransom. Neeson underplays his performance nicely, considering the character's back story has him a recovered alcoholic, with no ties to his family, who accidentally shot a little girl - and Neeson could have overdone it with the brooding, but he does good work here. Scott Frank's screenplay is all straightforward business, there's very little of his usual wit on display and there's no surprises. It's a grim throwback to small films a few decades past. The film's largest problem is how the killers are presented and it's at this point that the film doesn't really gel. There's an aire of mystery about these two monstrous killers who are targeting the family members of drug dealers, but that's dropped when the film simply and un-dramatically introduces the two men not too far into this story. They were obscured by shadow and darkness early on and then directed as if clouding their identity a few scenes earlier never happened. The scenes with the two serial killers just aren't strong enough and any mystery or foreboding sense of dread that the film had, vanishes the more time we spend with those two. There's also a half baked friend/mentor relationship between Neeson and a young homeless boy, that doesn't feel extraneous, but isn't fleshed out enough to be believable. A Walk Among the Tombstones is well made and certainly never boring, but with all that time the film languished in development hell, it's a shame Frank didn't deliver a stronger screenplay.

Inherent Vice starts off incredibly well, piling on visual gags and a crazed narrative that's hazy like a drug fever dream, but it runs out of steam and has a running time that just can't support this material. For about an hour and a half the film is quite inspired, as our perpetually stoned lead gets sucked into a labyrinth plot and one bizarre and usually fantastic character after another is thrown at this drug addled mess. The film continues at least an hour well beyond what this narrative can sustain. The pacing is off, the plot just feels deliberately muddled and while there are still plenty of jokes, the film just feels labored and exhausted after a while. Paul Thomas Anderson just didn't know when to quit on this one. The man is certainly one of the best filmmakers out there and despite Inherent Vice's shortcomings, it's still a wonderfully crafted film with some great acting - the cast is uniformly excellent. He may not have pulled off the film completely, but it's always a pleasure to see a director continue to make bold and challenging work. The film is usually episodic and feels mostly disconnected on a scene to scene basis and there really isn't a scene that doesn't work, but PT Anderson didn't exactly make enough disciplined editing choices to shape the film and trim it down.

Kenneth Branagh takes up double duty here, as the villain and as director for hire and pulls neither off. Shadow Recruit is a low wattage thriller and it very rarely has any life in it and just plods along until it ends with a whimper. The screenplay feels like a rough outline of a film, with characters and the entire premise not fleshed out. There's nothing complex happening or anything that might tax your attention if you zone out or leave for minutes on end and this is so straightforward - they couldn't even bother with a double cross or any character complexities beyond someone being one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. With an economic threat and a terrorist threat aimed at the US financial sector, nothing really feels at stake and everything unfolds in predictable fashion. Besides an easy payday, it's hard to see what attracted Branagh to such a vanilla and generic film. Chris Pine is serviceable as Jack Ryan, but he doesn't have much to do here and considering how bland and dull the chain of events are, the film doesn't have the spark that should reignite the franchise. There's no chemistry between Pine and Knightley and a pivotal scene where he confesses his secret job is so flat and poorly handled - that a smile and an '"ok"' is all the material Knightley is given -- lazy writing that sidesteps anything remotely challenging. The action is edited in typical seizure inducing quick cuts, that feels totally half assed by Branagh since the man is capable of so much more and this comes across like he can't mount an action scene if his life depended on it. Shadow Recruit is your run of the mill time waster that feels like a feature length TV pilot.