In the Land of Saints and Sinners

 A solid action/thriller set in Ireland at the height of The Troubles, In the Land of Saints and Sinners is an old-fashioned yarn that patiently positions Finbar, a recently retired contract killer (Liam Neeson, playing an Irish variation of his usual melancholy badass widower) in a collision course with a cell of IRA terrorists.

 Finbar is based off the sleepy town of Glencolmcille, where he takes orders from a local handler (Colm Meaney) and when he's not off killing people, he spends his days palling around with the local Garda (Ciarán Hinds) and his neighbour (Niamh Cusack).

 Early on he takes a contract where his 'customer' waxes philosophical in the face of death. Finbar goes through with the hit, but when he gets back he hands in his resignation and retires to do gardening and, he hopes, some good for the community.

 But you know how retirement usually goes for hitmen. Here it's not the criminal underworld that reaches back for him - instead, he notices that a little girl in the community is being abused. He quickly figures out that the culprit is one Curtis (Desmond Eastwood), and he resolves to come out of retirement temporarily to rid the world of the one asshole.

 It doesn't go smoothly, and Finbar has to be rescued by another hitman (Jack Gleeson, very funny and perfectly cast as a the very image of a 70's sociopath) who was keeping an eye on him. Even worse, the target happens to be the brother of one Doireann (Kerry Condon), the leader of an IRA cell that's gone to ground after a bombing that had a lot of collateral damage back in Dublin.

 Doireann starts shaking heaven and earth to find out what happened to her brother, and it doesn't take her long to find a trail that leads back to Finbar. So it's down to him to resolve the situation while keeping the damage contained. Not an easy ask when dealing with a bunch of terrorists with access to explosives.

 It's a simple story, well crafted, and magnificently acted. Condon makes for a fierce, unpredictable villain, and Neeson... well, it's easy to make fun of him for playing to type, but there's a reason he's allowed to do it time and time again. He's particularly soulful here, and there's something incredibly appealing to how he's trying to stave off his crushing world-weariness by trying to do some good, and his disappointment when it leads to more violence. The script (by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane) has a lot of Western overtones (Finbar literally hangs up his rifle!) which are underlined by a lovely soundtrack by the Baldenweg siblings. The dialog is excellent all around, with a couple of nice literary references and a surprising amount of pretty affecting grace notes towards the end.

 The action is good, but very straightforward and over with quickly - these are categorically not John-Wick-style assassins. Director Robert Lorenz focuses instead on the escalating tension and small character moments, with precious few stylistic flourishes, but he and cinematographer Tom Stern still manage to capture some very cool images.

 It's not, by design, the sort of movie that'll set the world on fire. But it is very, very satisfying.