Writer director Scott Frank is a detective fiction aficionado who has carved a career out of adapting the cream of contemporary American hard boiled literature.
His screenplay for Get Shorty was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Next, Frank wrote the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. For Out of Sight, Frank was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay and won a WGA Award. Frank’s additional screenplays include Heaven’s Prisoners based on the novel by James Lee Burke.
His latest film, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, is an adaptation of Lawrence Block’s novel, with the main character Matt Scudder, played by Liam Neeson.
The film begins in 1991 and Matt Scudder, NYPD officer is having a sly grog in a shady speakeasy when a sleazy trio walk in and shoot the barman dead. Scudder pursues them like a scud missile locked on target, blazing away and blasting them to bits.
Fast forward to 1999 and Matt Scudder is now an unlicensed private investigator and recovering alcoholic.
He hasn’t had a drop since he dropped those three deadbeats. One of his acquaintances at AA meetings, a young substance abuser and artist, Peter Kristo, implores Scudder to help his brother, Kenny, a drug dealer, whose wife has been kidnapped and murdered.
Scudder’s investigations reveal a pattern that links the crime with previous cases, including the murder of a female police officer whose missing files are fueling further foul deeds by a duo of sadistic, misogynist serial killers.
A WALK AMONGST THE TOMBSTONES is classic film noir, with a damaged hero, tons of money, a nefarious nemesis, unusual suspects and a sassy sidekick.
Indeed, the most meaningful relationship within the film is the one between Scudder and TJ, the homeless teenage artist whom the ex-cop meets in the library at the beginning of his investigation. On his own since his mother left him at the hospital during another bout with a debilitating illness, TJ has had to fend for himself for much too long.
Much to Scudder’s chagrin, TJ goes from research partner to a key ally in tracking down the killers. Playing the role of the aspiring junior detective is rapper Brian “Astro” Bradley, whose repartee with Liam Neeson as Scudder are worth the price of admission.
Skiting his superior scriptwriting skills, Scott Frank condenses, concertinas and expands the book, positioning aspects of Scudder’s fall from grace and his long road to redemption that are detailed in the series of volumes penned by Lawrence Block, into this particular narrative, nourishing Neeson’s splendid characterisation.
The plotting is well paced, and the dialogue delicious, eliciting laugh out loud moments that any comedy would envy. First class casting combined with premium production values makes A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES a jaunt worth joining.