"textbook Friday night entertainment and is the perfect excuse to check your brain in at the cinema door"

Once again showcasing his ‘very particular set of skills’ all-round senior citizen action man Liam Neeson takes to the streets of Brooklyn in another international popcorn punch-fest. Having systematically carved out his own niche genre, this latest ‘neesploitation’ picture sees the veteran Irish actor as ageing alcoholic hitman Jimmy "The Gravedigger" Conlan, who nowadays is more at home at the bottom of a whiskey glass than behind the trigger of a gun. The ex-mob enforcer is dogged by the murderous events of his roguish past, and has virtually cut all ties with everyone in his life, including estranged son Michael (an unmemorable Joel Kinnaman).

When a deadly encounter leaves Jimmy and Michael on the wrong side of infamous mob-boss Shawn Maguire (a gloriously intimidating Ed Harris) and the somewhat bent New York police department, the alienated pair must reunite in order to survive the onslaught of bullet strewn shoot outs and near fatal car chases. Third time Neeson collaborator, director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Non-Stop) creates his own heavily diluted version of the Road to Perdition, interlinking this with gratuitously whizzy aerial shots of the gritty New York terrain. The blood splattered violence is continuously maintained at an adrenaline inducing pace, firmly cementing this revenge thriller’s fifteen rated certificate.

Even at the ripe old age of 62 the ever seasoned Neeson puts robustly muscled men half his age to shame, with no amount of booze keeping this hardened assassin from carrying out the relentless abundance of sprightly action sequences. A formulaic (and at times nonsensical) script leads to an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, with there only being so many plot device variations before this well-trodden genre becomes insipidly stale. With redemption and paternal sins aplenty in this latest beat-‘em-up flick, Run All Night is textbook Friday night entertainment and is the perfect excuse to check your brain in at the cinema door.