In The Land Of Saints And Sinners: Liam Neeson Tones Down His ‘Set Of Skills’ In This Surprisingly Watchable Westerner

WATCHING LIAM NEESON taking his ‘unique set of skills’ to a landscape full of criminals, miscreants or just generally unfortunate oafs is not exactly a novel sight. At 71, the actor still releases a couple of films every year. Almost all of them belong to the category of old-man-dispensing-violent-justice with as much hesitance as it also evokes certain expertise. The prospect of a new action thriller, set in the hinterlands of Northern Ireland at the height of IRA’s (Irish Republican Army) activities, sounds as tantalising as it sounds dense for a routine action flick. Except, Lionsgate Play’s In the Land of Saints and Sinners is anything but routine.

Lowly and unheralded county Donegal is quietly intruded by runaway IRA vigilantes after they accidentally cause innocent bloodshed. The premise sets the stage for a familiar brand of vengeance. But this time around, the language and the grammar are neither hastened nor brutal in design. Donegal is stunning, windswept with the horizon running from ear to ear like a pastiche of time, stuck in limbo. The town is slow. The roads wind down, and the community thrives on collective empathy. Neeson’s Finbar Murphy is a slow-talking former killer-for-hire residing at the end of the world, to get through the last of his days. Contrary to form, this is a world full of restraint, held together by stunning landscapes and stretched by a supporting cast that exhibits depth unknown to the kind of cinema, orchestrated by Newton’s third law (if you kill me I kill you). Of course, violence plays its part, but here it is the avoidable sin, the formless expression, the abrupt departure from humanity and in one scene, quite literally, the pin that Murphy puts back in a ticking grenade.

Murphy, to most of the village folk, makes his living selling books. He obviously has a history, evident from his scowls and rigid mannerisms. He also has a thing going with his neighbour, a friend who takes his librarian status seriously and a young protégé (Jack Gleeson) who looks up to him in bizarrely intimate ways. Murphy is detached, incurious and intentionally out of touch. Here, Neeson’s age, his receding hairline, and hunched back finally become a metaphor for adult loneliness. “Maybe I’ll do gardening,” he declares at one point in the film. It’s the film’s way of reasserting the grimness of manhood shaped by the many things it must bury – literally and figuratively – in the backyard of its life.

Directed by Robert Lorenz, the film stretches itself into the wide, untapped corridors of rural Ireland. The deserted, plain fields echo a specific kind of stillness. Matched by the curious and often cursive behaviour of the characters in town. There are hints of the peculiarity of The Banshees of Inisherin, but not the spontaneity or the sombreness of its staid landscape. The relationships seem inert, the eccentricities derived, as opposed to the fulsomeness of the film it seems to imitate at times. That said, Neeson retains the power of his presence. That lumbering, heavy body though it is starting to drag its feet, still exudes a certain aura. The kind that can instantly relocate his modern action-uncle image to a place of his language, his ancestry, his culture — to his idea of peace.

Saints and Sinners isn’t a wild departure from his usual shtick, the late-age action hero avatar he has portrayed over the last two decades. But it’s reassuring, and maybe even exhilarating to witness a formidable actor capture that grace and depth again. Here the action feels deliberately slow, more cumbersome than audacious, hesitant than boisterous. Murphy is the violent archetype, but his reluctance is shaped by a lot more than vengefulness. His reactions aren’t immediate nor as profound or as brutal as you’d expect them to be. This is a testament to both, the agelessness of a stalwart actor’s legacy, and the dimming light over a shelf full of unlikely tightrope acts.

A film like In the Land of Saints and Sinners makes you wonder why Neeson has solely committed to the mould of this crabby, understated yet wildly mercurial action star. It’s impossible to separate the actor from his self-image, the years of unwieldy yet highly effective action hero shtick he has put out with embarrassing consistency. There have been other things as well, a credible racial controversy, and yet the incredulity with which Neeson continues to put down bad guys is matched only by the hopelessness of inflation, the contours of hate, and conflict becoming a way of looking at the world; vengeance as a metaphor for self-identification. It’s morose, a bit morbid even, but that’s the kind of glum worldview the actor has punched through, quite literally, with crackling limbs and the demeanour of a retiree upset about his delayed pension. That last part is beginning to show, and it’s maybe a good thing that the veteran can no longer heave like an agent of terror, and is finally confronted by elderly existentialism. Of which, there should frankly be more, or else what are such talents for?

In the Land of Saints and Sinners is now streaming on Prime Video