THE GUNMAN (Rated R)

Increasingly, it appears that the operative maxim in Hollywood action films nowadays is: Old Guys Rule.

Liam Neeson, a few years shy of Medicare eligibility, romps in the “Taken” franchise. Former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan was a killing machine in the recent “The November Man.”

Unlike Neeson and Brosnan, versatile actor Sean Penn is still in his fifties, but edging very close to qualifying for the senior discount at Denny’s.

In a showy display of his abs, Penn goes shirtless for a surfing scene in “The Gunman” during the midst of turmoil in the Congo.

As the titular character in “The Gunman,” Penn’s Jim Terrier, formerly with Special Forces, is now a mercenary when the film opens circa 2006 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a troubled nation consumed by the violent strife of a bitter civil war.

From the original “Taken” director Pierre Morel, “The Gunman,” from the outset, displays the type of powerful action thriller intensity that launched Liam Neeson into the action hero stratosphere. The same may not be true for Sean Penn, but it’s not for lack of effort on the physical side.

Pegged for deep undercover work that involves the assassination of the Congo’s Minister of Mining, Terrier becomes the designated trigger, and as a result, must immediately depart the African continent, leaving behind his cherished love, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), an idealistic medic helping the impoverished.

Deceived by the shadowy organization that employed him for a security task force, Terrier is forced to go on the run in a relentless game of cat-and-mouse across Africa and Europe. Conveniently, his associate Felix (Javier Bardem) stays behind, profiting from the mining operations.

Eight years later, Terrier seeks redemption by working with a charitable group to bring fresh water and food to an African village. Three armed men storm the encampment, and Terrier is able to fight them off and escape, realizing a price has been put on his head.

First, Terrier travels to London to connect with his old comrade Stanley (Ray Winstone), who reluctantly agrees to help him discover who hired the hit. Convinced his old firm is behind the attack, Terrier heads to Barcelona to confront the oily Felix, who had been the company’s liaison to the client.

While in Barcelona, Terrier finds his ex-lover Annie. She’s surprised by his return, but hesitates to be with him until he reveals the truth about his disappearance. In heroic fashion, he later saves Annie when they are ambushed by gun-toting assassins.

Connecting the dots as to who ordered the hit, Terrier discovers that his old boss, Cox (Mark Rylance), who even looks shifty in his tailored suit and slicked-back hair, heads the division of a company seeking to do business in Africa.

Approached by Interpol agent Barnes (Idris Elba), who prefers to speak in riddles, Terrier realizes that both sides of the law are pressing down, and the best course of action is to solidify his redemption with an all-out battle with Cox’s henchmen, with climactic fights at a Barcelona bull ring and amusement park aquarium.

Does “The Gunman” work for Sean Penn as an aging action figure? While the pace of the film moves briskly for the most part, Penn is not entirely convincing in the role, as it is striking how very much he wants to be seen as the reformed mercenary with a deeply engrained humanitarian streak. Liam Neeson has never displayed any qualms about bashing his enemies into oblivion.

Overall, Pierre Morel’s “The Gunman” won’t be mistaken for “Taken,” and yet with the all the action tropes firmly in place, the result is a boilerplate thriller that offers some fun but is unlikely to be memorable.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL UPDATE

This column space has previously touted the wonderful cinematic experience that awaits those trekking to Hollywood for the annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which this year is set for March 26 through 29.

TCM has a rather elastic definition of a “classic film,” and as such, don’t expect to sit in a darkened theater watching only black-and-white films from the 1930s and 1940s.

The George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez sexy caper film “Out of Sight” is not even 20 years old, but it’s on the program.

A more serious film from 1995, “Apollo 13,” the story of intrepid astronauts surviving an ordeal on the trip back to Earth in a damaged shuttle, has the benefit of Captain James Lovell in attendance for the screening.

Great stars are attending the screening of several films that celebrate their 50th anniversary. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer will be on hand for “The Sound of Music,” while the iconic Sophia Loren will introduce the screening of “Marriage Italian Style” and Ann-Margret does the same for “The Cincinnati Kid.”

Robert Morse, best known today for his role in “Mad Men” even though he was an acclaimed Broadway star in his more youthful days, will present “The Loved One,” a blistering satire on the American funeral industry so irreverent that it has developed a cult following.

Director William Friedkin will present his acclaimed crime story “The French Connection,” one of my all-time favorites. I only wish Gene Hackman would be on hand as well, but Friedkin should have interesting stories about how he filmed the great chase scene on location.

The TCM Festival has so many great films that it will be hard to choose. “Rififi,” a 1955 heist film from American director Jules Dassin that is set in Paris, inspired filmmaker Steven Soderbergh for “Ocean’s Eleven.”

Since the film has only been available in muddy video transfers, TCM will screen “Rififi” in a digital restoration. This is probably one of the must-see films.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – “Jesus Christ Superstar” will open at the Soper Reese Theater in Lakeport on Friday, March 20.

The production will run through Saturday, April 4.

Tickets are $23, $20 and $15, and are available at the theater box office on Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at 275 South Main St.; online at www.soperreesetheatre.com ; or at The Travel Center, 1265 South Main Street in Lakeport, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dedication, love and sacrifice are three commonalities possessed by the cast of the Soper Reese Theatre’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Dedication to getting it right: the notes, the meaning, the rhythm and the staging. Love of the show. Many of the cast have fond memories about the music which came out in the 70s and can tell you about the first time they saw the show or heard the music, and what it meant to them. And, sacrifice. These folks aren’t getting paid and yet they are rearranging their lives to do this show.

Three cast members drive 45 minutes to an hour each way. Several are juggling work, school and the show. Some are juggling multiple jobs and the show. One cast member is also caring for a parent. Several cast members are pretty sure they won’t be winning any parent-of-the-year contests.

Charise Reynolds is one of those parents. She plays Judas. She has always been active in theatre and ended up taking a nine year self-imposed hiatus to get married and start a family. She was looking for a show worthy of the time she knew would be spent away from her husband and five year old son when she came across the audition notice on Facebook.

“I was supposed to be installed as the vice president of a local youth soccer league and was killing time before the board meeting,” she said. “Three little words caught my attention: ‘gender blind casting.’ I immediately dug out my copy of the CD and blared it all the way to the meeting. Once there I resigned from the board so I could focus on preparing for the role of Judas, a role not traditionally offered to actresses.”

Six weeks later she auditioned and got the role.

After work she picks up her son from daycare, rushes home to make him dinner and then leaves him with one of her two sitters until her husband gets home from work. She typically doesn’t get home until after they are both asleep. On the weekends her husband often takes their son out so she can practice. “I never was as happy as the day I found out rehearsals wouldn’t conflict with T-ball,” she now laughs.

Jonathon Wynacht is also juggling his duties as a parent. “Right now, with three practices a week and a single father, sometimes I find myself doing midnight laundry sessions and sneaking off to Safeway in the late hours to make room for the practices. But my boys have been awesome and supportive, and it's a pleasure getting to know this cast of characters."

Katy Tipton is another working parent. She plays Mary Magdalene and is the director of the show. She, too, took a 10-year break during which she got married and started a family. She initially just came out to audition for the role of Mary. After winning the role she found herself being asked to direct as well, when the crew was reorganized.

Her routine is pretty similar to Reynolds’ with the exception that she doesn’t have to worry about T-ball so much. Instead she needs to get her oldest off to dance lessons before she gets herself to rehearsal.

On directing while acting in a show Tipton said, “This is a challenge for me. When I direct, I need to feel like an objective observer in order to have the show come out right. In other words, I have to be able to see the big picture. It's hard to do that when you have to insert yourself into the action. It's a balancing act, for both your concentration and your ego. Does the set look right; are the actors moving correctly; does this person have enough time on stage; am I putting 'myself' on stage too much?

“What's this thing over here and what can I use it for? Does it come in green? Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to sing right now. Can I sing this and not let the other two soloists down and still make sure the entire cast is doing what they're supposed to do? Why is the cast not with the piano? Is it time for a water break, yet? Plus, it's the weirdest thing ever to tell your former teachers what to do, and to be asked to call them by their first names. It's also really, really cool.

“So, basically, I'm freaked out and grateful and humbled that I was asked to do something this big, especially since I've been on a break from Theater for the past ten years. Amazing way to come back to it, you know, especially with this cast and crew. It's really nice to work with a bunch of talented singers and musicians who want to work and do the best they possibly can. It's wonderful,” she said.

Follow the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/events/1595751857305614 . For more information call 707-263-0577.

RUN ALL NIGHT (Rated R)

Liam Neeson is at it again in an action thriller that has the hallmark of the “Taken” franchise turned on its head, if only because his central character is now a washed-up Brooklyn mobster and once prolific hit man instead of a skilled former CIA operative.

Fittingly, “Run All Night” is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who performed similar duties for “Unknown” and “Non-Stop,” two action films that share the same bond of Liam Neeson acting heroic in showdowns with bad guys.

This third collaboration with Collet-Serra has Neeson in a tightrope of a different nature, for “Run All Night” has the actor playing the role of Jimmy Conlon, once such a feared assassin that his nickname “The Gravedigger” caused NYPD detective John Harding (Vincent D’Onofrio) to stay on his trail for decades.

Oddly enough, “Run All Night,” though set in the present, has the sense of the gritty New York landscape of the Seventies, where rundown buildings and neighborhoods are festering criminal hot spots. But even more in tune with a bygone era is that police corruption is rampant.

Early on, two NYPD patrolmen are spotted taking bribes from the Irish criminal enterprise run by Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), the man for whom Jimmy Conlon spent a lifetime doing contract killings and other assorted misdeeds.

Now semi-retired, Conlon has seen better days. An alcoholic living in a shabby Brooklyn apartment where he can’t afford to pay the heating bills, Conlon has become a joke to the younger hoods in the Maguire criminal family.

Scraping by on meager handouts, Conlon is reduced to such humiliating chores as playing Santa Claus at a mobster’s family gathering.

He’s also doing errands for Maguire’s hotheaded, loose cannon son Danny (Boyd Holbrook), who lacks his father’s smarts and sharp instincts.

A very big part of the guilt that wracks Jimmy during his sober moments is the knowledge that his estranged son Mike (Joel Kinnaman) adamantly refuses to have anything to do with him, such that Jimmy has never met Mike’s wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and two grandchildren.

Though he once had a promising career as a boxer, Mike Conlon is a working-class stiff who thinks first of providing and caring for his family, doing construction work by day and driving limousines at night.

At the boxing gym, he’s also a mentor to a Bronx kid, who figures prominently into the story when things go wrong one night.

Driving some shady-looking Albanians to a meeting, Mike hardly realizes that he would end up having to run for his life after Danny Maguire winds up in a shootout and decides that he must eliminate any potential witnesses to multiple execution-style murders.

When Mike becomes a target of the Maguire clan, Jimmy must make a choice between the crime family he chose and the real family he abandoned long ago.

The decision for Mike is tough because Shawn Maguire has been his longtime best friend and confidante.

With Mike on the run, Jimmy’s only penance for his past mistakes may be to keep his son from the same fate that Jimmy knows awaits him if he betrays the Irish mob. Did I fail to mention that “Run All Night,” aside from having a lot of violent action, is a story of redemption?

The central story is that the sins of the fathers come back to haunt their sons. While Shawn’s son is a ruthless punk who has no control of his emotions, Jimmy’s son has no love for his absentee father, who abandoned the family long ago and only resurfaced five years ago for the funeral of his former wife, the mother of Mike.

Set to pulse-pounding action that results in a thrilling car chase in Brooklyn and a tense manhunt in a burning Bronx apartment building, “Run All Night” touches all the bases for pure adrenaline excitement, even better than the best of the “Taken” films.

Though the story is full of action, the most interesting feature is the examination of the fractured relationships between two men who are like brothers, and a father trying to make amends with his son for things that happened years ago.

The estrangement that Mike feels towards his father is not so easily overcome, even though Jimmy is taking great risks to shield his grown son from vicious thugs.

But in the course of one long night, being chased through the grim New York streets by both sides of the law, the inevitable bonding occurs. 

While Jimmy penetrates the Maguire hideout and guns down a great number of henchmen, he and Mike do not so easily elude the most fearsome contract assassin Andrew Price (Common), a killing machine willing to eliminate Mike’s entire family if necessary.

The bottom line for “Run All Night” is that if you are a fan of the action heroics in several Liam Neeson films bookended by the first “Taken” to the most recent “Taken 3,” then this latest effort is a comfortable fit.

Whenever our hero, even when flawed, sets out to protect a family member, expect plenty of explosive action fanfare.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – La Voce del Vento Chamber Players present the last in a series of chamber music concerts on Sunday, April 12, at 3 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre. 

The program features harpsichord and woodwind selections, both ancient and modern. 

Lake County pianist, Tom Aiken, will play the harpsichord.

Reserved seat tickets are $20 and $15, and are available online at www.soperreesetheatre.com ; at the theater box office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Fridays; or at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main St., Lakeport, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

For more information call 707-263-0577.

With this column American Life in Poetry celebrates its tenth anniversary. Thanks to all of you for supporting us, week in and week out!

When I was a boy, I was advised that if a wasp landed on me I wasn’t to move until it flew away. I did as I was told and got stung.

Here Karen J. Weyant, who lives in Pennsylvania, takes a similar risk.

Yellowjackets

When my father held his Bic lighter
to the nests in back of the garage,
the gray paper pulp sparked

then blackened. Ashes fell,
coating crawling ivy and clover.
A few yellowjackets fled,

one or two swirled, flying
into the sweaty face of my father,
but most too stunned,

their usual side-to-side swag
of a dance, flailing in the smoke.
When one landed on my arm, I stiffened.

His wings settled into a still gauze,
body coiled in yellow bands,
the same shade as buttercups we held

to our skin, cupping sunlight near our chins.
Every step, careful, quivering, as if neither
of us knew who was supposed to sting.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Karen J. Weyant and reprinted from Poetry East, Nos. 80 & 81, Fall 2013. Karen J. Weyant’s most recent book of poems is Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt, (Main Street Rag, 2012). Poem reprinted by permission of Karen J. Weyant and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

LAKEPORT,Calif. – Lake County Friends of Mendocino College and the Friends of the Mendocino College Library are co-sponsoring a reading event featuring guest readers Armando Garcia-Dávila and Waights Taylor Jr. on Sunday, March 15,at 2 p.m. in room 7050 at the Mendocino College Lake Center.

The center is located at 2565 Parallel Drive in Lakeport.

Admission to this event is free.

Garcia-Dávila, the Healdsburg Literary Laureate in 2002-03, describes himself as a "blue-collar poet," as he expresses his wide-ranging thoughts rooted in his Mexican-American/Catholic upbringing.

His latest book, “Profile: Poems and Stories,” is a mix of humor, love, family and pathos.

Taylor, born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, is the author of the award-winning “Our Southern Home,” an examination of the Civil Rights movement.

His latest book and first novel, “Kiss of Salvation,” is set in Alabama of the late 1940s, pairing a white homicide detective with a black private eye in a mystery sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.

New York Times best-selling author Sheldon Siegel said this about Kiss, “The Kiss of Salvation takes us back to the dawn of the Civil rights movement in 1947 Birmingham. It’s a murder mystery, a history, and an in-depth study of evolving times in the American South. Deftly written and immensely readable, Taylor paints a picture of a complex era in American culture. Highly recommended.”

Be certain to mark your calendars for this free event that is sponsored by two affiliate organizations of the Mendocino College Foundation.

For more information about the event, visit www.mendocino.edu or call 707-468-3051.

For more information about the Mendocino College Foundation, visit http://foundation.mendocino.edu/site .