In the Land of Saints and Sinners film review — Liam Neeson stars as a hitman seeking to escape violence

Liam Neeson makes a break for it early in his new film, In the Land of Saints and Sinners. The setting is County Donegal, Ireland, in the year 1974, and Neeson’s character, Finbar Murphy, is keen to escape the violence that surrounds him as a freelance hitman. “There’s more to me than this,” he laments, and the line echoes Neeson’s own occasional hints at wrapping up his late-career action heroism.

Neither man’s attempt to turn over a new leaf is wholly successful. Still, the movie itself is a decent enough neo-Western, staged against a churning Atlantic. Director Robert Lorenz briefly sets Finbar to horticulture. But the simple joys of tending to broad beans are derailed by the need to mete out rough justice to a richly deserving stranger in town. Amid the repercussions, enter an IRA cell whose scratchy commander is played by Kerry Condon, a 2023 Oscar nominee for her role in The Banshees of Inisherin.

For Neeson, 71, the part at least reflects the march of time, which he himself has said makes the aggro roles tricky. Shotgun notwithstanding, here he is often found pipe-smoking down country roads in a gleaming Triumph 2000.

Lorenz goes big on vintage cars as period detail, to keep company the fistful of Irish tropes. Wherever you are in the film, you’re never more than 30 seconds away from a peat cutter, a Guinness, or a prominent packet of Taytos.

But mostly the film passes though the gears with smooth efficiency. Neeson is as sturdy as ever in a role Clint Eastwood might have played 20 years ago and a few thousand miles away. (Lorenz has produced several Eastwood pictures.) And Condon excels, giving a stock character a shudder of intensity and three dimensions. Neeson wants to make more interesting movies. Condon already seems to have stepped in from one.

★★★☆☆

On Netflix from April 26