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A Masterpiece!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I was never a Patrick Swayze fan, not because of his ability as an actor, but the movies he made. After watching the complete series of North And South, which he made before he became famous, i thought we would be in for some fine films. Next Of Kin in my view was an exception. The usual revenge story line, a member of a family is murdered by the mob and his family want revenge. What i found interesting about Next Of Kin, was the way Bill Paxtons family were portrayed. Not the usual cliché of being eliterite, stupid and being moonshiners. They were portrayed as intelligent human beings not to fool around with. I thought the entire cast played their parts well. Some reviewers criticise Ben Stiller for being miscast as a mobsters son. Well members of the Cosa Nostra do not walk around looking like people with blood dripping fangs and frothing at the mouth, they look like everyone else. Remember what Martin Scosece said in an interview about making Goofellas. A good film to watch on a quiet evening.

Next of Kin has a rather unusual story about hillbillies fighting against mafia in Chicago. It all starts when an ordinary hillbilly named Gerald Briar who moved to town in order to become a truck driver gets killed by mobsters while doing his job. The main villain is Joey (played by Adam Baldwin), a very brutal and relentless member of the Isabela crime family, who has to work with his boss' harmless son Lawrence (Ben Stiller). What he did not know is that the trucker had a huge family of highlanders, and his brother Truman Gates (Patrick Swayze) lives in Chicago and works as a detective. After Gerald's funeral, Gerald's second brother Briar (Liam Neeson), who is just an ordinary unsuccessful hillbilly, decides to travel to Chicago in order to investigate his brother's death. He occupies a room in a cheap motel, prepares some bullets, and starts beating or threatening anybody who gets in his way. Meanwhile, Truman, who has a beautiful violinist wife Jessie (Helen Hunt), also starts his own investigation but through peaceful means and more subtle threats.The movie is quite slow-paced and the Briar brothers actually try to get the full picture of the 3rd brother's death before killing anybody. However, the movie's finale is just a dumb shootout scene where mobsters get brutally slaughtered with weapons including shotguns, bows, crossbows, throwing axes and even snakes! One must wonder why the movie is so long when in the end everything comes down to fighting and Truman's plan of lawful arrest fails, but that is probably due to "movie magic". The rest of the movie is forgettable, with several events that do not make any sense. There is one exciting scene where Briar is being chased by mobsters and has to jump on moving trains which is worth watching. The scenes showing the Gates family in the hills are also well-made and successfully capture the spirit of a big highlander clan.All in all, Next of Kin does have some famous actors, most notably Liam Neeson and Patrick Swayze, but it's just an average crime action movie with several flaws.

From the score here I see that this movie is not enjoyed by all and is a universally well liked movie, but I thought it was rather good. The plot for me was much better than "Roadhouse" and you had an array of stars in this one to really make the movie good. Not only do you have Swazye, you get Liam Neeson too. Heck, you even have a young Ben Stiller in a small, but important role. The story has a guy from the south in the hills someplace as a cop in a big city. His brother is killed and while on a trip back in the hills his other brother wants revenge so he comes back to the city to seek out his revenge. About all there is to it with the plot though there is a surprise near the end of the film. The plot takes us to a couple of distinctly different locals on the way too as you have the city and you have the mountains too. The bad guys in this one are rather good too and the action is not super shoot em up or anything, but it is fairly exciting to watch. I liked the scene where Liam Neeson's character evaded capture by using trains to get away. In the end it is a bit different and while nothing spectacular it did entertain me.

It's Kain-tuck hillbillies versus the Chicago mob in a typical John Irvin bad classic, NEXT OF KIN. A wooden but beautiful Patrick Swayze stars as a Chi-town cop originally from Kain-tuck whose brother (a young Bill Paxton) is murdered by a psychotic mobster (FIREFLY's Adam Baldwin). Another brother, straight out of the Kain-tuck hills (a bearded Liam Neeson doing a perfectly dreadful hillbilly accent) shows up to avenge Paxton's death, and all hell breaks loose. It's the Hatfields versus McCoys, downtown style. A young, somewhat awkward Ben Stiller plays the son of the mob boss. The final showdown is a comedy classic, as an army of hillbillies who come to the rescue, armed with bows and arrows among other things, takes on the gun-slinging mob in a graveyard. NEXT OF KIN is no ROAD HOUSE, although Swayze races around a lot in an old Camaro. And he wears a funny hat. Plus he has a mullet, which he sometimes twists into a fetching ponytail. In fact, depending on the scene, his hair out-acts him. I sometimes wonder how John Irvin kept getting jobs, but I suspect the studios loved him for his "one-take and let's move on" attitude.