First, a quickie, spoiler free review: I enjoyed it. I like it more the further removed I am from watching it (a good sign,) though it definitely isn't perfect.
Tombstones is sort of a semi-modern update to the old school style detective story. You have your damaged goods main character, working for an employer of dubious employ (in the 40's and 50's they were mobsters; the updated analog makes them all drug dealers.) You have your somewhat twisty investigation that reveals more than anyone initially let on. You have your noir-ish moments where you don't know who or what to trust. And I guess because test audiences couldn't handle 113 minutes of Neeson being gruff as hell, you have a young sidekick.
All of it is pretty standard stuff for the genre, but two things help raise it up from "mediocre" to "pretty good":
1) Neeson is great at playing damaged goods tough guys, and he does a tremendous amount of work elevating the character of Matthew Scudder beyond just another gumshoe. There are few actors who would have been able to handle the material as well, and a miscast here would have sunk the movie. Which would have been a damn shame because...
2) There aren't many movies like this around nowadays. You get a lot of serial killer movies, crime dramas, tough guy redemption stories, character vehicles, etc, but very few people are making detective story/noir thriller movies anymore. It's understandable, given the market - studios are banking on big, flashy movies to draw audiences in, two things which Tombstones definitely is not - but it's a damn shame for anyone who is a fan of that style of movie.
Because of that, I'm willing to cut Tombstones slack I may not have otherwise. Though even with that consideration, I think Tombstones still holds up fairly well.
I can readily recommend Tombstones to anyone who is looking for a detective/noir-style movie, with a double down bonus if you like Liam Neeson. This movie is fairly far removed from his recent action movie star stint, so don't expect him to come in guns blazing and faces punched. There are some fisticuffs and guns are indeed blazed in a few parts but Taken 3 this is not (and thank all of the gods for that.)
After the break I'll dive into some move elements of the movie that struck me. This is getting into spoiler territory, so anyone who hasn't watched the movie should beware. I'm not sure how far I'll get into deep spoilers but I'm probably going to reveal some things you're better off experiencing for the first time during the movie.
Neeson's character arc - technically it's Matthew Scudder's character arc, but Scudder is such a cipher that whomever ended up playing him would essentially be him - in the movie is interesting.
The film opens super cold: no context other than a date (1991) and we're in the car with Neeson and another guy. They exchange some bitter banter, then Neeson goes into a bar to consume what we eventually understand is his morning routine drink - two shots of whiskey and coffee. The coffee is sensibly intermingled between the shots. A shot establishes, extremely clearly, that Neeson is a cop.
While Neeson is consuming his morning ritual drink, the bar is robbed and the owner is killed. Neeson clumsily chases after the robbers but manages to shoot down all three of them. Title overlay, then a time hop eight years to 1999, where the rest of the story takes place.
Throughout the movie a few things about that time jump are reinforced to us: Neeson's marriage fell apart, he quit his job with the police, and he found sobriety through Alcoholic's Anonymous which is one of the few social things he regularly participates in. Neeson is shown several times returning to AA meetings to check in and re-tell his story of getting sober and the morning shooting that inspired it.
He ends every telling of the story by saying that he gave up drinking after that day because it "never seemed quite as much fun after that." The first time the line is used, the audience at the AA meeting laughs; it's a funny punctuation to a harrowing story. The second time Neeson tells the story - a much more somber retelling during a low point midway through the film - the line serves as the vocal equivalent to him shutting the storybook. "Here is where the tale ends."
What struck me about the line during the movie was how awkward it is. Neeson doesn't seem at all remorseful for killing/severely injuring the robbers, and he seemed to be having a grand 'ol time chasing them down. I could see it as a moment that makes all other drinking sessions pale in comparison - "This JWB is great and all, but I could really use a gunfight right now" - but it didn't really line up as an incident that would make him quit drinking.
And it damn sure didn't line up with the line "It never seemed as much fun after that" (aside: I may be mangling the quote, but that's at least an accurate paraphrase.) The first time Neeson tells the story, he delivers it cleanly and clearly. But at the end he starts stammering and stuttering, tripping over the last few things he wants to say before ultimately giving up, thanking everyone for their time, and walking off the stage. His second telling of the story ends with a dry, sad thud as he drops that signature line with all the enthusiasm of someone in a hangman's noose.
Around 2/3rds of the way through the movie we learn that Neeson has not been telling everyone (which includes us as the viewers) the entire truth. The robbery, chase, and shooting went down as he described, but he left out one crucial detail: during his guns blazing pursuit of the last fleeing suspect one of his shots killed a young girl.
It is at that moment that Neeson's acting (both then and retroactively) saves what would otherwise have been an extremely boilerplate character. Neeson's character is a gruff, tough sommabitch throughout the rest of the movie, but in the scene where he finally tells the whole story Neeson injects just the right amount of emotion and does so in the best way. Neeson is haunted by what he's done; it's something that he'll never let himself escape (the ritual of retelling the story keeps the wound open) and at the same time it's something he can't really face (every time he tells the story, he leaves out the actual part that made him sober up.)
This revelation also adds another layer to his departure from the police force. Instead of being held accountable for the girl's death, Neeson was given a commendation for stopping the three criminals. The girl's death was brushed aside and he was hailed as a hero.
All of this worked very well for me because of the way it was conveyed. Detective stories work best when the main character is a damaged, broken soul, so Neeson had to have some great sadness in his past. It would have been perfectly possible to show that moment at the start of the movie - I can imagine a screenplay where we stay in 1991 for another 2 or 3 minutes to get what we don't see until much later - but I think that would have undercut the impact of it. Moreover, that opens up the slippery slope where we see Neeson brooding periodically (with intercut flashbacks) to remind us that he has serious demons.
Scutter's character works because this information is withheld from us. We know he's a battered, bitter, tortured soul. The reason why isn't the most important part; what is most important is conveying that information in a way that enhances the mood of the story with bonus points if you do it without murdering the pace of the movie. Tombstones does this well, and as I've thought more about the movie it's become one of my favorite parts.
That's not to say that the movie is without it's flaws. But before I get to those, I want to mention another very powerful aspect of this movie: the killers and their crimes.
Tombstones' opening title sequence is one of the most disturbing, unsettling credits sequences I've seen, maybe ever, and introduces us to what will be a prominent feature of the movie very well: the killers and their horrifying crimes.
The title sequence moves between soft cuts of a man and a woman clearly being intimate with each other. However, with each cut things get more disturbing: the way the woman is reacting, the way the man is touching her hair, the odd body language. All hints that something is very wrong.
Eventually we get the stinger: a quick flash showing that it's one woman with two men. Then, very explicit: her mouth is taped. She's clutching the sides of a table that is wrapped in plastic. She's crying. Something extremely bad is happening.
All of that happens without anything remotely explicit being shown (thank god for that,) but the implications couldn't be clearer. It's slow, it's agonizing, and it's absolutely horrifying as the reality of the situation becomes apparent.
That is our introduction to the killers, and in short order we are told of their crimes: they abduct the wives/significant others of drug dealers, then ransom them back to their lovers. Unbeknownst to them, the killers are already at work raping, torturing, murdering, and eventually dismembering the kidnapped woman. The killers use the vocation of their targets against them - they can't go to the cops without exposing themselves and of anyone they're the most likely to have lots of cash on hand to pay a ransom with no questions asked - but the real targets are the women. It becomes very clear partway through the movie that the killers are less interested in money than they are to have the opportunity to have their way with a beautiful woman.
I have watched a lot of violent, brutal movies in my time. The same morbid curiosity that exists in so many of us lives in me as well, and I can't help but sometimes seek out movies that threaten to push my boundaries and disturb me. The one thing that a lot of those movies have in common is that they aren't especially threatening or boundary pushing: the violence is explicit and upfront. That can do a lot to discharge the impact of the violence - it's still gross and unpleasant, but I'm essentially engaging in an imagination-off between myself and the director. Every once in awhile a director will win that exchange, but (as is so often the case) my imagination is usually a lot worse than anything that they show on screen.
Tombstones, for what this is worth, does it right. They attempt to paint a picture of two deeply disturbed, sadistic, psychopaths that engage in absolutely terrible crimes against women. I've watched a lot of movies with that same premise (side note: if I ever have a daughter I'm teaching her Krav Maga and loading her down with knives) and where they falter is the same place that many "serial killer" features do: it is very, very, very difficult to show horror.
Others have said much about this topic, and when you think about it for just a few seconds it makes sense. What scares me isn't necessarily going to scare you. Behaviors I may find disturbing or terrifying may give you a chuckle. An act that may make me want to vomit may barely make you blink. Horror is extremely subjective. On top of that, it can be very easy to mishandle a scene - inappropriate/ineffective dialog, bad effects, poor cinematography - and render it ineffective or even worse (from a tonal perspective,) inexplicably amusing.
Tombstones handles it in what is, in my experience as a viewer, the best way to do it: keep everything absolutely minimal. We are only given the briefest view into the actual crimes - an audio recording send to one husband and a flashback from a witness that watched the beginning of one of the women being tortured - and everything else is left to our imagination. Many other clues and cues give us more information that lets us paint a more vivid picture - we see their tools, their clean up, and the single-purpose house they live in - and that picture that we paint is much more effective than any Hostel inspired torture scene ever could be.
Two things also help to make the killers and their crimes so effective that they still stick in my mind:
1) The few windows we are given into the crimes are very, very well executed. As mentioned previously, any mis-reading at those points would undermine the feel the crimes are supposed to impress upon us. I've seen other movies try to get a similar emotional response from me and they often botch the landing in some way that diffuses it. Tombstones makes no such mistakes and as a result its crimes are deeply disturbing and haunting.
2) The actors cast in the roles of the killers are oddly perfect. One actor - David Harbour - is one of those "I know that guy!" actors, but the other - Adam David Thompson - I hadn't seen before. In both cases, the actors are low profile which helps with the immersion. Their costuming is also very well executed: they're a pair of guys who look odd, but not too odd. You can imagine them getting by just fine in everyday life, never really registering on anybody's radar. But when they need to transition into the role of psychopathic torturer rapist murderer, they can do so and it likewise fits.
Tombstones does those two things - the main character's arc and portraying the killers - very well. Which is very good because those are probably the most important aspects of the story. That said, there are a few key areas where Tombstones falters.
The film follows two threads that link up to the same plot. For most of the movie, we follow Neeson as he tries to track down the killers. Around halfway through the movie, we start to also follow the killers as they stalk, meet, and eventually abduct their last would-be victim.
On one hand, I can understand the reason why they opted to give us that window into the set up to the final abduction. By the time we come into the movie, the other crimes are already done and over with so we learn about those through Neeson's investigation. The final crime is a work in progress, and it would be at least a little odd for it to just happen offscreen, then for everything to go into the end of the movie.
On the other hand, showing the killers in their routine does de-mystify them and relieve some of the tension surrounding their crimes. I think this was at least partially intentional: show that, for as horrible as these men can be, they aren't actual monsters. Just deeply broken, disturbed people. The Ted Bundy principle. But this movie isn't really a serial killer flick - the focus is mostly on Neeson and his eventual self-redemption via solving this case - so the killers don't really warrant that kind of development.
That narrative dissonance also crops up in how the movie resolves. For 80% of the movie, Tombstones is about Neeson trying to track down the killers (detective drama, with some noir-y elements thrown in but not terribly prevalent.) The next 10% is a ransom/exchange drama (with some Taken-esque moments for good measure.) The finally 10% is a gunfight that leads to the final showdown in the home of the killers, which ends with Neeson killing the remaining murderer after he off'd his wounded buddy. And the husband of one of the victims - played by Dan Stevens - ends up in the metaphorical fridge with his wife, but more on that in a second.
That early 80% is pretty excellent. The 10% ransom-y bit is okay, and the last 10% is kind of a let down. The ransom portion of the movie is well done and thankfully brief (plus I'm sure it's the easiest way to get the two groups to meet up in the narrative) but it's still a somewhat unwelcome gear shift from the earlier portion of the movie (when the next step is unknown) to a ransom/exchange format (where you can almost certainly guess how it's going to play out.) And the last 10% is sadly very formulaic, though at least it's vaguely satisfying in that both killers are dispatched by the film's end.
My totally random, unsubstantiated guess is that either the screenplay or the novel (apparently this movie was adapted from a book, something Hollywood should really look into more as it's not at all common these days) got to the point where they were staring down the end of the story, and they couldn't figure out how to end it. Most of the story up to this point was all detective work and talking, so they opted to go out in a blaze of gunfire, fisticuffs, and tasing.
It's okay (and I'm sure a welcome relief to all of Neeson's Taken fandom who showed up to watch him kick ass and he just keeps talking omg when is he gonna kill doodz!?,) but it could have been so much better. Much of the efficacy of Tombstones comes from how much it holds back, while letting you know that there is more. The ending sequence reads false/incongruous because it's so straightforward, so explicit. Moreover, it's oddly uplifting and positive in a movie that is dark and oppressive. Instead of ending on reinforcing note, the movie discharges almost all of the tension and mood it's built up, and then it just kind of walks across the finish line. Not that the ending sequence is rainbows and sunshine - Neeson's employer is brutally murdered and he has to fight for his life in a murderbasement before unceremoniously shooting the murderer in the head - but it's also sold as a way for Neeson to get revenge for the murdered women.
Alright, fine. I'm sure Neeson's character would have wanted to avenge those women after learning about what happened to them. Plus you can have that be the capstone to his atonement. But they already had someone who wanted that revenge much, much more, and they killed him offscreen! Alternate ending: instead of getting out of his handcuffs, the remaining murderer stays chained up and knocked out. Stevens' character gets him out of his handcuffs (use your imagination as to how) and drags him down into the basement where he proceeds to brutally revenge murder the hell out of him.
All of his happens offscreen; instead of returning to find Stevens' character dead, Neeson comes back to find Stevens at the top of the stairs, covered in blood. Neeson and Stevens exchange a quiet stare, then some moaning/screaming/yelling comes from the basement and Stevens heads back downstairs. Neeson leaves. For added social justice points you can have him walking past cop cars headed towards the killer's house. The movie ends the way it began - a sad, brutal crime - but it's an oddly positive note, it still has closure, and it preserves the dark feel of the movie. Not everything can or should end with a climactic fight sequence...but nevermind I guess it does.
That said, I still liked Tombstones a good bit. It's had the distinction of being one of those movies that has stuck with me after watching it, in large part due to the excellent performances (Neeson in the lead, but everyone in it did a great job,) and also due to how effectively they communicated the horrible nature of the crimes committed by the killers. Some aspects of the character development and story were very good, but it kind of loses its way towards the end. Not in a way that sinks the movie, but it definitely detracts from the overall impact. I'm interested in re-watching it at some point to see how well it holds up, though that won't be for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment