Next of Kin

This one is a winner. [27 Oct 1989, p.F]

Swayze is persuasive in his role as an Appalachian boy sufficiently assimilated to big-city life to have married a classical violinist, and Baldwin makes a slick, icy villain. But it is Neeson as Briar Gates who steals this movie. Wily, saturnine, exuding a bitter familiarity with failure, he paints a portrait of a man whose actions are simple but whose feelings are complex. The part offers few lines to play with, but Neeson inhabits the role physically, the twang and the scruffiness never betraying his classical training at Dublin's vaunted Abbey Theatre. It's an enduringly poignant performance. [24 Oct 1989, p.3]

Picture climaxes with an elaborate war in a Chicago cemetery between Baldwin’s mafioso and Neeson’s Kentucky kin, matching automatic weaponry with primitive (but reliable) crossbows, hatchets, snakes and knives.

Much of it makes no sense whatever, and the most interesting element is watching Neeson and Adam Baldwin, who plays a psychopathic Mafia underboss, steal the picture from under Swayze's nose. [7 Nov 1989, p.C8]

Automatic weapons versus shot-guns. Silly stuff, but it held my attention. [21 Oct 1989, p.C3]

After a fairly good, tense opening, it keeps rolling up one preposterous scene after another.

We've known for years there is a hillbilly heaven because Tex Ritter used to sing of one. Now, thanks to Next of Kin, we know there's a hillbilly hell. [24 Oct 1989, p.4D]