In the Land of Saints and Sinners

Another engaging Liam Neeson "particular set of skills" suspense thriller, this time set in 1974 Ireland as a retiring hitman finds IRA Troubles arriving on his doorstep.

I s’pose at some point people are going to get tired of all these movies where Liam Neeson does his Geezer Badass shtick, playing seemingly placid older men who secretly have a particular set of skills. But, based on the whip-crack “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” that time has not yet come.

This one is set in 1974 Ireland during The Troubles, when the IRA was seemingly blowing up everything in sight. As a twist, here the chief villain is not some alpha male miscreant but a woman played by Oscar nominee Kerry Condon, who turns out to be a fierce and implacable foe.

Directed by Robert Lorenz (“Mystic River,” “Trouble with the Curve”) from a screenplay by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane, “Saints” is thoroughly engaging as a suspense thriller but also contains weighty notes of regret and longing.

Neeson plays Finbar Murphy, who lives in the bucolic Ulster hamlet of Gleann Colm Cilli, the sort of place where there’s one tavern that most everybody gathers at for drink and revelry.

Everyone takes Finbar to be a book trader, though his real vocation is hitman. He gets occasional assignments from a local arranger played by Colm Meaney. Upon returning home from the war he found his wife had passed away, so he just kept on doing the one thing he was good at.

Finbar’s M.O. is like the man: gruff and unadorned. He’ll stake out his target at whatever tavern he frequents, catch him on the way home, toss him into the trunk of his car and drive out to a remote spot he uses for dumping bodies. Finbar makes the doomed man dig his own grave, then gives him exactly one minute — he even brings an egg timer for accuracy’s sake — to speak his last words. He figures everyone deserves that.

He shows no mercy, but no cruelty, either. He even plants a tree over the grave of each victim, and by now he’s grown a veritable forest.

Finbar’s getting on now, and the life has begun to wear on him. He doesn’t even bother to spend the money, stashing it in a hidey-hole behind a shelf. The last words of his most recent victim were a warning not to wind up like him and walk away from the life before the dark shadows catch up with you.

His only neighbor is Rita (Niamh Cusack), a patient woman nursing her husband through his dying days. They’ve become friendly… and a bit something more. Without any words having passed between them, there’s an implicit understanding that after she’s widowed and observed a respectful period of mourning, they’ll couple up.

Finbar tells his handler he’s done killing, and even decides to start a garden to occupy his time. He also has a rivalry/friendship with the local Garda Síochána aka police, Vinnie (Ciarán Hinds), often having shooting contests with the same shotgun Finbar used to execute his victims.

His path to retirement is spoiled, though, when he intervenes between a young girl, Moya (Michelle Gleeson), being abused by the brother-in-law of the local barkeep (Sarah Greene). Curtis (Desmond Eastwood) is a nasty little piece of work, even giving the girl a bullet as warning to stay silent, and eventually Finbar decides to employ his skills one last time.

Little does he know the man is part of an IRA crew that just pulled off a horrific job in Belfast where a mum and three small children were killed. They’re hiding out in the area until things cool off, led by Doireann (Condon), a true believer type who thinks you need blood and headlines in order to nourish the movement. She easily cows a pair of flunkies (Seamus O'Hara and Conor MacNeill), even boxing them about the ears like wayward children.

Doireann goes looking for Curtis, and when she finds out an assassin is involved she thinks someone in the IRA put out the hit on them to erase a liability. Soon the whole thing devolves into a spree of revenge and paranoia.

Jack Gleeson, best known as Joffrey in “Game of Thrones,” has a nice supporting part as Kevin, a young apprentice hitman who looks to Finbar for mentorship. His Cheshire cat grin and giggling approach to killing runs afoul of Finbar’s code of honor, which says even a dying man deserves dignity.

Things build to exactly what you expect, with some tense standoffs and inevitable bloodletting. These action scenes are well-staged and grounded, without any of the superspy athletics or John Wick-style fight-dance choreography. It turns out killing isn’t exciting, but loud and brutal.

Condon makes for a surprisingly menacing villain, perhaps because of the stark contrast between Finbar’s detachment from murder and her enthusiastic embrace of fear and death. One kills for money, the other for a cause, and each sees the other’s reason as unworthy.

I appreciated “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” for its simplicity and self-regard. It’s the sort of movie that knows what it is, doesn’t make apologies and does it very well. Neeson gives his usual assured performance as a man of violence who accepts it as intrinsic to his existence but not his nature. It’s what he does, not who he is.

Neeson’s been milking these roles for more than 15 years now. Even the Marvel movies finally seemed to hit a wall and I’m sure these will, too. But not yet.