A novel idea seven years ago, the “old-guy action star” gimmick is finally starting to, well, grow old. Liam Neeson and Taken opened the door for many a grizzled, tough-guy screen vet to walk through and inject their career with a nasty shot of testosterone. Sylvester Stallone gathered a gaggle of his veiny, thick-necked buddies to cash in on the trend with the Expendables series, and Taken director is teaming up with a bulked-up Sean Penn in the impending action thriller The Gunman. The Expendables was a ton of stupid fun, but its subsequent sequels didn’t capture the same campy, gun-crazy indulgence. The “old-guy action star” sub-sub-genre is on its last legs, to the point where you can hear people groan when they walk by movie posters with Mr. Neeson on the cover, looking hard and brandishing a pistol. “Whatcha think this one’s gonna be about, bro?” Hardy-har-har!

The Taken series has followed the same downward trend in quality as Sly’s Expendables, but on the side Neeson’s been making another line of action movies, all directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Non-Stop and Unknown stuck firmly to convention, but actually weren’t half bad; the action was well-shot, the dialogue was slightly silly in a good way, and the acting was super solid (one can never accuse Neeson of phoning it in — he’s a consummate pro). Now, the duo are back with Run All Night, another clichéd shoot-‘em-up flavored this time by themes of revenge and old-school New Yawk masculinity. It’s about on par with the pair’s previous collaborations, which isn’t a bad thing; despite the triteness of it all, the quality of work by all parties elevates the film well above the schlocky action-movie turds cinephiles habitually avoid at the cinemas.

Pitted against each other in a bloody night-long war are Neeson’s Jimmy Conlin, a boozer ex-hitman, and his mob-boss childhood friend, Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). When Shawn’s reckless, greedy son (Boyd Holbrook) tries to kill Jimmy’s estranged limo-driver son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman), Jimmy’s forced to pull the trigger on his best friend’s boy. As a trade, Shawn sends out his goons (including Common, playing Price, a stealthy, dapper assassin) in full force to kill Mike, forcing Jimmy to protect his son through the night, evading the henchman, Price, and the police until he can figure out how to fix things. Mike, a father and husband himself, is far from compliant, however, as he’s carried around a deep resentment for his murderous dad since he abandoned the family years ago.

While on the run Jimmy paints the city streets with blood (cop blood, mob blood, his own blood) as he and Mike dart around the city. Several opportunities arise for Mike to spill some plasma of his own, but Jimmy insists he not pull the trigger. “You’ll be no better than me,” he warns his next of kin. The breakneck action sequences are well-edited and staged, though the best bits come when Collet-Serra slows things down and gets inventive, like when Jimmy infiltrates Shawn’s social club or when the old friends have a hide-and-seek shootout at a train yard. In these instances Jimmy uses creative thinking to eliminate the baddies as opposed to his quick trigger finger; it’s a nice change of pace.

What’s frustrating, though, is a pestering visual effect in which we zoom from a sky-high view of the city down to street level to meet back up with the characters. It’s jarring (the effect is wholly unconvincing), cheesy, and provides zero geographical context to the proceedings. What’s worse, it’s used again and again, as if it’s critical we know exactly where in NYC they are at every moment. I don’t get it.

The acting’s spot-on, though. Neeson plays “that guy” again — you know, the guy with the “particular set of skills” — but he still manages to make things relatively interesting. Add in Harris as his sparring partner and you’ve got a slobber-knocker on your hands; with ease, the pair make it believable that they hate and love each other to pieces at the same time. Nick Nolte makes a strange cameo as Jimmy’s brother, probably to up the gruff appeal another few notches (as if Neeson and Harris weren’t gruff enough). Kinnaman is decent, if a tad one-note, but almost stealing the show is Vincent D’Onofrio, playing an NYPD detective with his own agenda, obsessed with getting Jimmy to confess to the murders of his past victims.

When you’ve got a cast with this much on-screen mileage between them and a talented director with a confident style, it’s kind of a can’t-lose situation, though that’s not to say Run All Night is a big winner. Those with an affinity for explosions and violence and old-timers proving they can still be macho, there’s a whole lot to like here. I’m not sure how many more action romps Neeson’s got left in him (probably more than is reasonable), but if he keeps on truckin’ down the road of movie badass-dom, let’s hope he brings Collet-Serra along for the ride.

Sometimes going into a film with zero foreknowledge allows for a deeper understanding and more open viewing experience. It also means that one’s gut reaction is going to end up being the overall feeling one’s left with. My gut reaction after a cold-viewing of Ryan Piers Williams’ X/Y was that the movie felt like it was written as a vehicle for an under the radar filmmaker to give himself the spotlight. Almost immediately after having this thought Williams’ name appeared on the screen declaring him director, writer, and star. I think I laughed out loud. The film’s press notes (which I read later) describe it as a snapshot of a few New Yorkers caught between generation X and Y. This seems dubious. Williams’ motivations in making a film he and his wife, America Ferrera, could star in surrounding emotional intimacy among urban young folk seems to fall squarely into generation Y. And believe me when I say, I’m not faulting him for it. It’s the rally cry of the Millennial generation that if they see a hole in the world, they set out to fill it. Williams has created an insightful, if maybe unflattering, view of his peers, in a film that is expertly crafted and performed.

Williams stars as Mark and the film opens on him and his girlfriend Sylvia (Ferrera) having particularly sad sex. Their connection is fraying, proven when the disappointing sex turns to a full-blown fight. In their next scene Sylvia admits to having cheated on Mark out of loneliness and his emotional distance. Mark leaves, eventually landing on his friend Jake’s (Jon Paul Phillips) couch. The film then splits into four sections. First Mark, who’s arguing with his agent about the direction of his screenplay and not wanting to sell out for a studio deal (another distinctly gen Y trait of artistic integrity over a solid paycheck.) At night he parties with Jake and their friend Stacey (Amber Tamblyn) with whom he flirts, but who he soon realizes has her own relationship problems back at home.

Next up is Jen (Melonie Diaz), recently unemployed and best friend to Sylvia. The two get together for some spa pampering and gossip, Jen rambling on without ceasing about all the latest men in her life. Sylvia endures it until her own news comes out about her and Mark’s separation. Jen does what most single girls baffled by their happy friends’ behavior would do: she immediately criticizes Sylvia telling her to make it right. Sylvia denounces Jen’s advice on the basis of her own love-life being a joke. Hurt, Jen takes off for a shopping spree to soothe her hurt feelings but first swings by last night’s hook-up to pick up a bag she left. His wife answers the door. She buys bags of clothing, taking them home to her already overflowing apartment, the emotional metaphor all too obvious.

Jake is the focus of the next segment, starting with sex in a dirty club bathroom with a stranger. He dumps her unceremoniously onto the floor after, taking off without a word. A model and artist, Jake still struggles from a semi-recent break-up, unable even to appreciate the advances of a nice girl he meets at a photo shoot. Desperate (as each of these characters are) for a connection, Jake pushes boundaries with a close friend, both of them giving in if only to feel desired.

Sylvia acts on her own feelings of need in her segment (which of course also starts mid-sexual encounter, which all of the segments do in some way or other), keeping up an affair with co-worker Jason (Common), the one she cheated on Mark with. It becomes obvious to her the relationship is purely sexual, and she needs to choose if she can live with that. Meanwhile, her edge at work is waning as she gets more and more distracted by her problems at home.

As I said before, Williams may have made the film as a vehicle for his own talents, but because he clearly has talent, it’s hard to hold this against him. The film’s writing focuses on the more negative aspects of relational difficulty, and as all the characters are close-knit friends, it does give off the impression that no one is happy anywhere. The film’s NYC location is obvious but not essential to the story, though Williams’ story is distinctly centered around the urban experience.

The thumping music and large lettered title cards distributed throughout X/Y are distinctly GIRLS-like, another argument for its gen-Y status as it is emulating the most Millennial show out there. But arguments for what generation the characters belong to aside, what Williams and his press team should have said about X/Y’s title is that it represents the chromosomes that make up people. And that people need each other, and there are ways in which that need leads us to hurt each other and ourselves. That truth transcends generational categories.

Williams and Ferrera (who produced) make a great team and have created a relatable, albeit one-sided, look at not only a group of young people, but at a basic human condition. It’s the character’s response to this condition that makes the film interesting, but it’s their assumption that this is somehow harder for them or a problem more unique to their generation that keeps the film from having true depth. It’s not harder, it’s not unique, it’s all part of being human. But maybe we just talk about it more, in which case I hope making this film proved truly therapeutic for Williams and company.

X/Y is out in theaters and on VOD March 6. 

LUV, by first-time director and co-writer Sheldon Candis, poses the question: Are today’s black, inner-city youths predestined to become corrupted by the murderous environment left to them by their felonious predecessors, or can they muster the strength to transcend the bleak future they’ve inherited and cleanse themselves of their fathers’ sins? LUV is a trite, hackneyed film with a relevant message that is saved from mediocrity by riveting performances delivered by a gifted cast.

An aggressive coming-of-age story set in the urban streets of Baltimore, LUV follows 11-year-old Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.) as he accompanies his alpha-male, ex-convict uncle, Vincent (Common), on an eventful quest to hustle enough money to finance the opening of a crab shack. This is Vincent’s key to a straighter life. The film consists of Vincent’s increasingly dangerous attempts to procure the much-needed money, all viewed through Woody’s virgin eyes. It’s a crash course in street life that unfortunately escalates into distracting implausibility. The later scenes in the film, especially the climax, follow the blueprint laid out by similar crime-drama works like The Wire so closely that every moment and beat feels clichéd and telegraphed. The script fails to innovate or color outside the lines, and the film ends up playing like a greatest-hits of urban crime-drama scenes. Also, the overly melodramatic plot rubs up against the gritty, grounded photography of Baltimore in an unsavory way. Though the collection of scenes that comprise the movie don’t add up to anything special, there are a handful of moments that pack real tension and an emotional punch.

The script is unbalanced, and its inconsistencies are jarring. Early in the film, Vincent asks Woody if he has finished his homework and then tells his nephew that he is talented when Woody shows him some sketches he’s drawn (of his uncle, adorably.) Moments later, he yells at Woody for not flirting with a girl, and forces his nephew to skip school. Later in the film, Woody finds himself in the harrowing situation of having to fire a handgun to save his uncles life. He chokes, immobilized with overwhelming fear. Later that night, 11-year-old Woody, held at gunpoint, successfully conducts a $25,000 drug deal with a gang of thugs. It’s nearly impossible to suspend disbelief in these scenes, as the absurdity of these situations is almost comical.

The overly-derivative script’s saving grace is the ultra-talented cast, who give remarkable performances across the board despite being cast as every black criminal archetype in the book. Common plays a street Casanova; he walks like he’s won before, head held high, eyes unblinking, embodying irresistible charm and street savvy. As the sins of his dubious pre-incarceration history begin to catch up to him with deadly force, his tough-guy façade begins to crack, and Common conveys Vincent’s deterioration with nuance and finesse. Though Vincent takes some jarring, questionable turns as a character, Common does his best with the role and his performance shines.

A first-time-actor, Rainey Jr. shows impressive range for a child actor, and carries an air of genuineness that few young actors are gifted with. Dennis Haysbert plays the kingpin antagonist with gravitas and calculation, and Danny Glover, who plays his equally untrustworthy brother, complements and enhances Haysbert’s performance with the adeptness of a true movie veteran. The brothers, unlike the rest of the inner-city cast, live in an extravagant suburban house in the woods, though it’s later revealed that they had climbed to the top at the expense of their younger protégé, Vincent. Though the climax of the film is trite in its writing and staging, Haysbert, Glover, and Common’s use their sharp acting skills make what is a paint-by-numbers scene on paper truly intense and powerful on screen.

The soundtrack is comprised of somber, dreamlike drones that attempt to underline the drama of the scenes they accompany, but unfortunately end up dampening them. To his credit, Candis does dispense of the cliché of obnoxiously blaring hip-hop music in every establishing shot to tell the audience “This is a black neighborhood, this is what black people listen to.” Candis has a hard time finding solid footing in his wobbly delivery of the narrative. He does, however, show a true knack for eliciting fine performances from his actors. LUV is a woefully contrived tale of delinquent father-figures and inescapable pasts, but it succeeds as a platform for its excellent cast to exhibit their masterful acting skills.