Synopsis
Truman Gates, a Chicago cop, sets out to find his brother's killer. Meanwhile, another of his brothers, Briar (a hillbilly) decides to find the killer himself.
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Cast
- Patrick SwayzeTruman Gates
- Liam NeesonBriar Gates
- Adam BaldwinJoey Rosselin
- Helen HuntJessie Gates
- Ted LevineWilly Simpson
- Bill PaxtonGerald Gates
- Michael J. PollardHarold
- Andreas KatsulasJohn Isabella
- Del CloseFrank
- Valentino CimoRhino
Recommendations
- 88
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Next of Kin is a fast-paced, crisply directed, very entertaining genre movie. It has a lot more style and wit than most of the serious fare that's around. [25 Oct 1989, p.3E] - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Neither a buddy-buddy action-comedy nor a pyrotechnical showcase of explosions and stunts, NEXT OF KIN--an intelligently made and moodily atmospheric action melodrama--provides solid, satisfying entertainment while demonstrating just how effective a fully realized genre film can be. - 75
Chicago Tribune
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] - 70
The New York Times
An appreciably better-than-average revenge drama. - 70
Variety
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. - 50
Washington Post
It is a middling gun play that asks and answers the persistent question: Whither testosterone? - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
Automatic weapons versus shot-guns. Silly stuff, but it held my attention. [21 Oct 1989, p.C3] - 40
Los Angeles Times
After a fairly good, tense opening, it keeps rolling up one preposterous scene after another.
