Oh, there you are, LB. Still got a pulse, eh? Still capable of sitting up and taking nourishment?

Sarcasm is so easy, isn’t it? And perhaps justified, as I have in fact been silent for a month or two…

Or three.

…but I’ve been busy.

With things you won’t talk about.

Not just yet, no. But something else inspires me to break my long silence. A few days ago, Netflix decided to Spring Forward by offering its subscribers A Walk Among the Tombstones, the 2014 film written and directed by Scott Frank and starring Liam Neeson. And I’m evidently not the only one to find this cause for rejoicing. In no time at all AWATT was the streaming service’s #10 title, and the last I heard it had moved up into second place.

The film’s pulling in a whole lot of new eyeballs, as one might say, and it’s also generating a good deal of chatter, online and elsewhere. Seven years after its release, the movie’s drawing the enthusiastic reviews that it didn’t get back in the day.

I’m not surprised. What did surprise me, back in 2014, was how utterly A Walk Among the Tombstones failed to find its audience. I saw the film before its release, and I thought it was a clear winner. Liam Neeson had been at the top of my Scudder wish list ever since I saw him in Michael Collins, and his performance was pitch-perfect, his screen presence magnetic. Scott Frank’s script was taut and solid, and the cinematography (Mihai Malaimare Jr.) and the score (Carlos Rafael Rivera) were both impeccable. With all that going for it, why shouldn’t the movie get raves from the critics and sell a ton of tickets?

One word: Taken.

In 2008, the film with that title made Liam Neeson an action-adventure star, and was successful enough to launch two sequels imaginatively entitled, with the imagination and ingenuity for which the industry is justly renowned, Taken 2 and Taken 3. They were, as they say, excellent examples of what they were, and they put a lot of bottoms in a lot of seats.

And they took all the air out of A Walk Among the Tombstones. Because, unlike the Taken films, it never set out to be a pulse-pounding action thriller. It was thoughtful and measured and character-driven, very much the sort of film adaptation a Matthew Scudder novel ought to inspire.

So the Taken fans found it lacking, and told their friends to give it a pass. And AWATT’s ideal audience never bought tickets in the first place, expecting another Taken installment under another name.

And the critics were no help.

Never mind. The picture’s finding its audience, and it’s the late-in-life hit it should have been seven years ago.

And you’re raking in the bucks, right?

Um, that’s not how it works. I got paid when they made the film, and I’d have earned some bonus money if it had been a major hit, but it wasn’t, and its new life on Netflix won’t put any money in my pockets. But, you know, that’s okay. I’m not walking around with empty pockets. And this way my motive for urging you to see the movie is not ulterior but altruistic.

So—if you’re a Netflix subscriber, and if you haven’t seen A Walk Among the Tombstones, I would urge you to do so. If you saw it some years ago, I’d advise you to see it again. There’s a lot to like about the picture, not least of all the way Liam Neeson contrives to embody the character of Matthew Scudder.

And, whether or not you watch the movie, I’ll urge you to read the novel. I admire the film greatly, for all the reasons I’ve cited, but it’s not perfect. There are ways in which the book is superior.

For one, the story’s better. It’s easier, after all, for a novel to have a better storyline than its film adaptation. If a book’s rich in incident and texture, it’s going to lose something in translation. And, when the timespan between film option and theatrical release is fifteen years, the erosion can be considerable.

Elaine Mardell, Scudder’s girlfriend, plays a major role in the novel; she doesn’t exist in the film. A surviving victim of the killers provides a key lead; she’s omitted altogether. A dismally trite plot device—Scudder’s case butting up against some unrelated drug investigation—is pressed into service. TJ, while played well enough by the rapper Astro, has way more dimension in the book. And the film’s ending is at once hoked up and less powerful.

I can see you really loved it.

It’s a good movie. But it would have been a better one if the script had tracked closer to the book. I know Scott told me he regretted having lost Elaine; I think if he’d made AWATT later than he did, after Godless and The Queen’s Gambit, he might have made a few different choices, ones that to my mind would have served the film better.

Never mind. If you have access to Netflix, see the movie—sooner rather than later, as I don’t know how long they’ll be making it available. If you don’t have Netflix access, you can hunt for it elsewhere; it’s shown up from time to time on premium cable, and I’ve no idea where else you may be able to find it.

And read the book. It’s not hard to find.

Cheers,