Run All Night (2015/Warner Bros. Blu-ray w/DVD)

Picture: B+/B- Sound: B+/B- Extras: C+ Film: C+

Ed Harris and Liam Neeson go head to head in the typical action/thriller Run All Night (2015) from Director Jaume Collet-Serra. While the film features Neeson as a father protecting his child much like Taken, it's nothing like that trilogy of films. Mobster and hit man Jimmy Conlon (Neeson) has one night to figure out where his loyalties lie: with his estranged son, Mike (played by the new Robocop Joel Kinnaman), whose life is in danger, or his longtime best friend, mob boss Shawn Maguire (Harris), who wants Mike to pay for the death of his own son. Released in theaters around March 2015, it didn't seem like the film really got slammed by critics but received more of a lukewarm reception.

Boasting interesting performances (especially Neeson and Harris) but lousy scene transitions that feel like someone was really trying to mimic David Fincher's work. (CGI transitions where scenes pull out to a wide of the city and then swoop down to a tiny detail within the mass of the scene, just didn't work for me.) Much of the plot is pretty predictable, but with a run time of under two hours, the film feels it's about as long as it needs to be. There are a few scenes that stand out as exceptional and others that get a little jumbled in the overall story arc.

Neeson here is a cross between his character in Taken and his character in The Grey, an alcohol hitman with a particularly good shot (and set of skills) but is a raging alcoholic smoking at least three packs a day. Ed Harris continues to amaze as a seedy Mob Boss and expertly acts his way through the film, one scene in particular that stuck out as strong is when Neeson calls him on the phone to tell him that he has murdered his son, Harris slumps down and tells his Wife, who is getting ready in the bathroom the bad news and loses it. Then again, there is no bad performance by Ed Harris.

Run All Night looks great on Blu-ray disc with a 1080p high definition transfer and a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and a lossless, sharp DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 audio track. Packaged with a digital copy and a standard definition anamorphic DVD & lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with matching content, though lesser quality, is also included in the set.

Extras include:

Shoot All Night - a BTS of the film where you see how they shot in New York during the AM hours.

Liam Neeson All Night - Cast/Crew talk about what it likes to work with the infamous Liam Neeson in an action film, which has become his trademark in recent years.

Deleted Scenes - about 16 minutes worth of deleted scenes are pretty cool to watch, but ultimately you can tell why they didn't make the cut.

All in all, Run All Night, isn't the best Liam Neeson film of late or the worst. Seeing him go head to head with Ed Harris definitely makes it worth a watch once and thanks to Warner Brothers, the transfer on this Blu-ray disc is nothing to run away from.

- James Harland Lockhart V

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