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.

Daryl Wein’s indie romantic comedy Lola Versus is just as much about finding love in yourself as it is finding love in others. The film attempts to give a unique perspective on the genre by telling it from an unapologetic single woman’s point of view, but it does not fully succeed. Thankfully, terrific performances from the lead (most of the supporting roles) saved the film from falling completely flat.

Lola (Greta Gerwig) just turned 29 years-old and according to her astrology book, it is the year that Saturn returns to the location it was when she was born. Now she expects her whole world to turn upside down (figuratively and astronomically). But she is reluctant that her life needs changing even though she understands that change is inevitable.

The film wastes no time getting to a monumental change in Lola’s life when her boyfriend Luke (Joel Kinnaman) proposes to her. As happy as she can be she replies, yes. Lola and Luke begin to plan out the wedding. But just as quickly it began, Lola returns home one day to discover that Luke no longer wants to get married. It is not revealed why Luke suddenly has a change of heart but Lola obviously takes the news incredibly hard. It was as if someone pulled the rug out from under her feet.

As Lola hits rock bottom, she relies on her friends to pick her back up. Her best friend Alice (Zoe Lister Jones) offers her shoulder for Lola to cry on. And so does Henry (Hamish Linklater), who is awkwardly stuck in the middle because he is friends with both Lola and Luke. Her parents also offer their support and comfort her as much as they can.

You could see it coming a mile away that eventually the platonic relationship between Lola and Henry would soon change. And it does. He was there for her when she needed someone and now she cannot let go. It is a realistic situation but one that we all know what the outcome will be.

The relationship turns from strictly friends to more when Lola asks if Henry will spend the night. She explains the reason for this is that nights are hard for her now that she is alone. While that may be true, there is definitely more to it than that. When things continue to get worse for Lola, she uses Henry as an answer to her problems.

Lola’s life is just as confusing to herself as it is to the viewer. Often, it is easier to see answers to other people’s problems than your own, but in the case of Lola, it was just as difficult. Part of this is due to the fact that sometimes life does not make sense; you do things that you know you should not. However, part of not understanding her character is obviously a fault of the film.

The beginning of Lola Versus felt completely rushed as if they were forced to stay within a 90 minute runtime (which it barely does). The drawback of that is not getting to know the characters and who they really were. Because the audience feels little attachment to characters, it is hard to care about when her heart-breaks over Luke. The fact they were all of a sudden getting married, then breaking up in the next scene, did not help matters either.

Also it did not help that Joel Kinnaman was so rigid in his role as Luke. Not only that, but his dull lines and personality made it was almost hard to bear. Fortunately, the rest of the cast all had noteworthy performances. Greta Gerwig handled the lead role with grace and received great support from both Hamish Linklater and Zoe Lister Jones.

There were times that Lola Versus veered off the predictable path of romantic comedy, but unfortunately they were very brief. It largely remained a generic rom-com with some head scratching dialog and situations. This film falls victim to having the cast try to carry a mediocre-at-best script, which ends up being a suicide mission for everyone involved.