It’s not necessarily that we forget Liam Neeson is Irish – not exactly. It’s more that his Irishness has long felt subsumed into a brusque Irish-Americanness, his characters’ drinking conducted at dives that are half Irish pub and half Western saloon, the Catholic guilt that powers so many of his vehicles turned semi-secular. Hell, even in an Ireland-set movie called In the Land of Saints and Sinners, no one’s much concerned about going to mass, like.
If they did, you can imagine them praying to Saint Eastwood. Robert Lorenz, the In the Land of Saints and Sinners‘ director, assistant-directed Clint Eastwood’s movies for years, then produced some, then branched out to his own directing career, first making an actual Eastwood vehicle (Trouble with the Curve), then an Eastwood-style vehicle for Neeson (The Marksman), and now In the Land of Saints and Sinners. It is tempting to say that he has finally arrived at a lead character who could not be played by Eastwood, given that Finbar Murphy (Neeson) lives in a quiet small town off the coast of Ireland in 1974, and also is named Finbar Murphy. But Finbar, a contract killer retiring from his violent ways, has certain Eastwoodian qualities, like his chummy relationship with local policeman Vinnie O’Shea (Ciarán Hinds), who has no idea of Murphy’s former day job, and his reluctant sorta-mentorship of fellow assassin Kevin (Jack Gleeson), who he attempts to warn off a life of violent misdeeds.
In the style of a Western, Finbar gets drawn back into his old profession by a gang of outlaws. After fumbling a car bombing in Belfast, a quartet of IRA operatives led by Doireann McCann (Kerry Condon) arrive in town to hide out; Doireann has a tenuous family connection there, as her departed husband’s sister Sinéad (Sarah Greene) tends bar in Glencolmcille. When Finn intuits that Doireann’s brother has been abusing Sinéad’s little daughter Moya (Michelle Gleeson), he takes it upon himself to relieve Moya’s burden. Though it doesn’t turn out exactly as Finbar expects, the man’s death still sends Doireann on a rampage, forcing the older man to further reckon with his choices and possibly leave his beloved small town behind.
In most Neeson vehicles, the lead adversarial role would be played by a slightly younger male actor, perhaps with some name recognition but not quite Neeson’s level of gravitas. So there’s a certain amount of automatic novelty in pitting the big guy against a decades-younger woman (and a recent Oscar nominee at that). Condon isn’t affecting the subtlety of her work in the similarly sea-swept (and dissimilarly everything else) The Banshees of Inisherin; she spends much of In the Land of Saints and Sinners in a barely contained rage, reigniting interest in a stock part. Setting her off against a restrained Neeson has an unpredictable edge, even when the story doesn’t have many surprises in store.
Indeed, the actual plotting of In the Lands of Saints and Sinners is rife with coincidences and contrivances – hoary stuff, borderline blarney. The characters, though, are engaging; none of the main players are denied their flashes of humanity, which makes the Irish Western material seem a little more demanding of Neeson, Condon, Gleeson, Hinds and Irish Movie stalwarts like Colm Meaney. Eventually, this quality gives way to some unearned sentiment in the final stretch. But as movies about a Liam Neeson character marinating in regrets before punching and shooting his way out of immediate danger go, this is a pretty good one, by which I mean at one point Neeson smokes a pipe while driving a car. It’s also Lorenz’s best as a director by a fair margin, a movie that feels inspired by Eastwood and old Westerns, but not beholden to them. Maybe he should Irish up his coffee more often.
Director: Robert Lorenz
Writer: Mark Michael McNally, Terry Loane
Starring: Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Jack Gleeson, Ciarán Hinds, Colm Meaney, Sarah Greene, Michelle Gleeson
Release Date: March 29, 2024
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.