Review: Neeson In Action Again In 'tombstones'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's not for nothing that the names of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are reverentially referenced in writer-director Scott Frank's adaptation of the 10th novel in Lawrence Block's long-running, best-selling series featuring unlicensed private eye Matthew Scudder. The film's tense 1991-set opening scene efficiently provides the character's backstory as an alcoholic NYC cop who gave up the booze and the badge when his shootout with some bad guys on the streets of New York City went tragically awry. Enlisted by fellow AA meeting attendee and drug addict Peter (Boyd Holbrook), Scudder reluctantly takes a case involving Peter's prosperous drug-dealing brother Kenny (Dan Stevens, in a sharp departure from his heartthrob role in "Downton Abbey"), whose wife was kidnapped and returned dead despite his having paid a $400,000 ransom. After the discovery of another female victim, this time left in pieces in trash bags in a park in Brooklyn's historic Greenwood Cemetery, the trail eventually leads to a pair of serial killers (David Harbour, Adam David Thompson) who target criminals so as to avoid their getting the authorities involved. A Walk Among the Tombstones," a Universal release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "strong violence, disturbing images, language and brief nudity.