Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
Liam Neeson shines like a well-polished antique, honed and seasoned, every wrinkle, a badge of glorification; with over a hundred films his 6’4 frame, and craggy countenance still kindle alarm in whomever he stalks; his presence, burnished style galvanized to impeccability in director Robert Lorenz’s “The Land of Saints and Sinners” as retired assassin “Finbar Murphy”, residing in a quiet costal town in Ireland. Cinematographer Tom Stern strokes the landscape with lush, celestial, reverence and cushions the sleepy burgh with poignant intimacy; strangers inspire inquisitiveness and are treated warily.
Commencing with an IRA bombing where innocent perish; the perpetrators, led by a gutsy, snippy “Doireann” (Kerry Condon soars with roaring cruelty peppered with an uncanny sensitivity), isolate themselves in Finbar’s village; hence peace is crushed, Western action plunders the copacetic singularity and revenge is served piping hot.
The film is a gem, tautly written and framed, featuring a community woven into a tapestry of camaraderie and trust; Finbar yearning to be reformed, blending into the simplicity of an environment where assassins are anathema. Nostalgia percolates at the core of his every deed and dawning awareness that escaping his past is inevitably impossible.
Neeson’s filmic prowess from the early 80’s (“Excalibur”) through the 90’s (“Schindler’s List”, “Michael Collins”, “Rob Roy”) and twenty-four years of this century, recovering the “Taken”, realms of “Batman”, “Gangs of New York”, “The Chronicles of Narnia”; he is a ubiquitous hero, perpetually rescuing the distressed damsel, martyring the malicious, triumphing toxicity. In “The Land of Saints and Sinners” he is the quintessential compilation of the two.
FOUR STARS!!!!
Peneflix
