By now, Liam Neeson has made who knows how many revenge thrillers. Thousands of ‘em, give or take. If they vary in quality, Neeson mostly doesn’t, slipping into the skin of these weary revenge-seekers with practiced ease, an assembly line worker who intuitively knows how close quitting time is but never glances at the clock. What does vary, however, is the worth of Neeson’s opposition. A hero, even an anti-hero, is typically only as good as his or her villain, and in so many fly-by-night direct-to-streaming thrillers, you can’t always enlist an actor equal to a Neeson, unfortunately. It’s just how it goes. Ah, but in Robert Lorenz’s “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” recent Oscar nominee Kerry Condon is so good as the chief heavy that she doesn’t steal the movie so much as own it right up front. And if on the page, Neeson’s character is a little more restrained than usual, as an actor, he also seems to register Condon’s volume and harmonize with it, withdrawing just a bit to spiritually give her the floor.
Neeson is Finbar Murphy, a WWII veteran who works as contract killer for a local crime boss (Colm Meany) along the Irish coast. He might murder people for a living, but hey, he’s also got a soul, as his running an alarm clock for 60 seconds to give his contracts a chance to say their piece before they bite the dust evokes. In fact, it’s one of these confessions that causes Finbar to give up his line of work, to show people who he really is, to offer something else to the world, or so he says. Indeed, “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” has him say it, but then never follows up, never explores his latent desires. No, he basically pulls himself out so he can get pulled back in once Doireann McCann (Condon) and her small IRA crew show up in County Donegal looking for a place to lie low while the heat blows over from a bombing gone wrong.
Despite the Irish locales and thick brogues, there is a from the box sensation to “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” characters and situations that feel as if they could have been transported to, say, British Columbia and not missed a beat. Ostensibly, the provisional Irish Republican Army being involved would counteract this notion, but Lorenz hardly pushes those political buttons. Doireann proclaims she’s fighting for a free Ireland, but we don’t see much of that what that entails. And yet, when Condon says it, in the moment at least, in the space of Condon’s line reading, you believe her, and the movie betrays her by never pulling harder on that thread. In primarily seeking to avenge her slain brother, Doireann is more like a stock villain, and yet, even if we know the character stands no chance against Finbar, there is something frightening that lingers in Condon’s air, especially in shots looking down on her as she looks straight ahead, eyes blazing. When she kills the local crime boss, his mother (Anne Brogan) comes to the door, and Doireann stops her from entering, but polite like, almost, talking to her from the other side of the door in a soothing voice. Dressed in black, the way she’s lit, and the way Condon carries herself, she comes across, I swear, like an angel of death.
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