It might sound like a Western but this is pure urban thriller: a lone, retired cop named Mathew Scudder (Liam Neeson) seeking redemption for past deeds amongst the seedy underbelly of New York City. Based on a novel by Lawrence Block (who's written 17 Scudder novels) it's gritty, relentless and brutal in places – no sign of any blue sky, cool decor or shiny happy people.

We first meet Scudder in the early 1990s when he's drinking hard liquor for breakfast and killing armed robbers with a scary sense of detachment. Fast-forward to 1999 with its end of millennium menace and Scudder is now a private eye and reformed alcoholic. But while he may have cleaned up his act he's no Happy Man, and reluctantly agrees to take on a case for Kenny Kristo (Dan Stevens) a drug dealer whose wife has been abducted and sliced into pieces despite the payment of a large ransom. Helping Scudder find what happened are Kenny's drug addicted brother Peter (Boyd Holbrook) and a young homeless teenager TJ (Brian Bradley). When the good guys are as flawed as these four, you know the bad guys are going to be really something, and screenwriter/director Scott Frank creates two psychopaths of the Dexter-meets-Hannibal Lecter variety – without the personality of either. Creepily played by David Harbour and Adam David Thompson, these two have hit upon a gruesome scam to abduct female family members of cash laden drug lords, knowing the police will be kept out of the picture.

Writer/director Frank never pushes the psychological aspects of the film hard, preferring to hover between the redemption, the procedural and the revenge aspects of this dark male world, framed by AA meetings and the language of the 12-step path to salvation. Neeson looks permanently world-weary (and old and tired at times) but that's Mathew Scudder. The rest of the cast are universally strong – in particular young Bradley, who buoys the film's tone with the chemistry TJ establishes with the nihilistic Scudder. And there's another superb cameo from Icelandic actor Olafur Darri Olafsson (who you may remember from a scene stealing performance in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The cinematography from Mihai Malaimare is beautifully gloomy and the film's score – from Carlos Rafael Riviera contributes significantly to the mood with its echo's of Psycho and The Godfather. As you'd expect from a walk among tombstones, the journey is bleak and tinged with a damply spiritual sense of loss.