Liam Neeson is no stranger to a Western.
In 2006, he starred in the tense David Von Ancken revisionist Western 'Seraphim Falls' opposite Pierce Brosnan.
He took on the role of the villain in Seth McFarlane's 2014 comedy western 'A Milion Ways To Die In The West' alongside the director Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried.
Finally there was a brief appearance as a travelling theatre impresario in the Coen Brothers' 2018 Western anthology movie 'The Ballad of Buster Scuggs'.
Now he's at it again, making a Western of sorts but this time one that masqueraded as a movie set during Northern Ireland's Troubles.
Teaming up once more with Robert Lorenz, who directed him in the hitman thriller 'The Marksman', he takes his action schtick to Donegal, the notoriously picaresque, rugged county in the northwest corner of Ireland.
'In The Land of Saints and Sinners' is not a typical Troubles film but an attempt to make a Troubles thriller in the style of Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'.
Neeson plays Finbar Murphy, a hitman of advanced years who is friendly with Ciaran Hinds' local Garda, Vinnie O'Shea.
Living in the gorgeous coastal village of Glencolmcille, Vinnie is oblivious to the fact that his mate works as a hired gun for Colm Meaney's Robert McQue.
Taking his victims hostage at gunpoint, Finbar gets them to dig their own graves in a remote forest, executing them and planting trees where they have been buried.
With Jack Gleason's young Dubliner Kevin also in McQue's employ, Finbar is getting jaded and requests retirement.
Finbar is also wooing a neighbour, Niamh Cusack's Rita who cooks him dinner and advises him on the state of his garden.
Glencolmcille's solitude, though, is disturbed by the arrival of an IRA gang led by Kerry Condon's hotheaded fanatic Doireann McCann.
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The gang is meant to be laying low on the southern side of the Irish border after a car bombing they carried out in Belfast which killed three children.
Despite two of her colleagues' identities becoming known to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Doireann is planning more IRA attacks.
Her brother, Des Eastwood's Curtis, however, spends a lot of time at the mobile home lf his sister-in-law Sarah Greene's Sinead, the local barmaid who Finbar is friendly with.
Checking in regularly with Sinead's young daughter Moya, Finbar is shocked to discover bruises on her arm inflicted by Curtis and consults Vinnie about whether he can intervene.
Vinnie, however, reveals the Gardai can do little if no formal complaint is made, so Finbar decides to take matters into his own hands.
Offering Curtis a lift, he takes him to the remote spot where he murders and buries his victims.
During a confrontation, Finbar kills the cocky young IRA man when he pulls a knife.
Curtis' disappearance alarms his sister, with Doireann going to see McQue with her comrades, Seamus O'Hara's Seamus McKenna and Conor MacNeill's Conan McGrath as someone with his ear to the ground to see if he knows what happened.
Realising Finbar has dispatched Doireann's brother, McQue tries to throw her off the scent but she discovers in his study evidence that the crime boss knows exactly what happened and who is involved.
Forcing him to reveal the identity of Curtis' abductor, she guns McQue down and embarks on a private war with Finbat who is aided and abetted by Kevin in taking the fight directly to the IRA gang.
Can Finbar prevent his friends and neighbours, though, becoming collateral in his showdown with Doireann?
The first thing that strikes you about 'In The Land of Saints and Sinners' is that it's definitely an improvement on a lot of Neeson's work of late.
Admittedly, that's setting a very low bar for Robert Lorenz's film but it does make good use of its Donegal locations.
However while the movie is an improvement, its screenplay by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane is still daft.
While the film certainly benefits from having an Irish cast with no-one mangling the accents, the notion of an IRA gang on the run waging a war in a Donegal village is still ridiculous.
Vinnie's obliviousness to how his sharp shooting best friend makes a living also isn't credible.
On top of all that, the concept of a Dostoyevsky reading hitman and his boss operating in plain sight in the hills of Donegal is also bonkers.
At times, the film seems to be aware of its ridiculousness, though.
Doireann's Tipperary brogue and her brother Curtis's thick Belfast accent are conveniently explained but it isn't very convincing.
The film seems to have a rather strange attitude to violence too.
After failing to prevent innocent kids dying in her car bombing, Doireann seems to quickly get over her trauma and carry on killing.
There's also something rather unseemly about a female character who has figured in the first half of the film as a potential love interest being punched in the face and then pretty much ignored in the rest of the film.
Lorenz hasn't the flair to cover up the inadequacies of McNally and Loane's script.
Cinematographer Tom Stern points his camera at the action a lot of the time and just let the cast and the Donegal countryside do all the talking.
Fortunately, the landscape is rugged and atmospheric and that helps hold the audience's attention.
As for the performances, you get a pretty mixed bag.
Neeson does his usual troubled hitman schtick, channelling once again his inner Clint Eastwood and he is decent enough.
Condon makes for an interesting, if rather shouty and sweary villain who may as well wear a black Stetson.
Meaney delivers his usual performance, relying on his trademark deadpan delivery.
Gleason unconvincingly steps into the role of a naive young buck that is similar to the one Jaimz Woolvett played in 'Unforgiven'.
Cusack and Greene are handed stock roles as the kind neighbour/love interest and the troubled young widow and they dutifully trundle their way through them.
Des Eastwood, O'Hara and MacNeill do their best with one dimensional roles as IRA villains.
Only Hinds manages to find depth in an otherwise underwritten part, easily stealing the scenes he's in no matter who he is sharing the screen with.
If you're looking for a film that digs into the horrific violence that blighted Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic for 25 years, then 'In The Land of Saints and Sinners' isn't your film.
It's no 'Angel,' 'Cal,' 'Hidden Agenda' or 'Shadow Dancer'.
The Troubles is merely a backdrop to Lorenz's Irish Western.
But it also fails to convincingly tap into the ambivalence towards violence that made the Oscar winning 'Unforgiven' such an unforgettable film.
In the end, it's just a B movie vehicle for an old fashioned showdown between goodies and baddies that pretends to be more than it actually is
It's disposable and ultimately forgettable and that's a real shame because it could have been so much more.
('In The Land of Saints and Sinners' had a limited movie release in the US on March 29, 2024 before being made available for streaming on Netflix in other territories on April 26, 2024)
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