A Walk Among the Tombstones

Retired New York cop Matt Scudder (Liam Neeson) investigates the kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of a drug trafficker's wife, finding that the culprits have done this kind of thrill-killing before—and plan to do so again. Writer-director Scott Frank (adapting Lawrence Block's novel), devotes less care and effort to clarifying his complex plot than to portraying the crimes in near snuff-porn detail, putting a disturbing, grisly edge on a story that was hardly for the squeamish to begin with. With Neeson on hard-boiled cruise control as Scudder (previously played by Jeff Bridges in 1986's 8 Million Ways to Die), the picture plays like an extra-rough installment in Neeson's Taken franchise: Taken, Tortured and Butchered. Neeson gets good support from Brian “Astro” Bradley as his streetwise confederate.