Reed is an alcoholic living out of his camper van, spending his days hunting deer in the dense mountain forest around him. Into this depressing existence steps Jim Reed ( Berenger), a loner with a troubled past. Early dialogue (and dialogue is as sparse as sunshine here) shows inhabitants desperate to escape the dreary town and the lives they’re living. The snow is deep and heavy, the citizens seem to trundle around miserably, drinking their woes away. In Allagash, (the original title was supposed to be Allagash, and although it’s understandable why they would want to change it, it’s hard not to feel like Blood and Money was a lazy compromise) a quiet, snowy, barely inhabited town in northern Maine, life is rough. It is content to walk the same path trodden by dozens of movies before it, and not nearly well enough to stand out from the crowd. Now he’s front and centre in a snowbound thriller about as imaginative as its title suggests: Blood and Money, for all the set-up seems promising, unfortunately adds nothing new to this subgenre. Berenger, probably most famous as Sergeant Barnes in Platoon and Sam Weber in The Big Chill, has himself been quietly plodding along in the last decade, starring in a host of forgettable titles with the occasional diamond in the rough. Now we can add Tom Berenger to that list. There have been plenty of 70s/80s action stars ready and willing to jump on this bandwagon.
Of course, Neeson himself isn’t the sole benefactor of the geriatric revival: Sylvester Stallone has seen marked success with his Expendables series, as well as managing to resurrect one of his most famous characters in John Rambo, while Bruce Willis has been quietly trucking on with the likes of his Death Wish remake, as well as various direct-to-VOD work of varying quality.
For every Taken (and let’s not forget the ridiculousness of that movie, sometimes lost in the discussion about its impact on popular culture) there is a Non-Stop, for every A Walk Among the Tombstones, there is a Taken 3. In the decade since that movie, there have been highs and lows. It’s been over a decade since Luc Besson’s Taken debuted, single-handedly reinventing Liam Neeson’s career and jump-starting the ‘geriatric’ subgenre of action movies which Neeson himself still appears to be the centre of.
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