Joe Carnahan's latest is an atmosphere-as-theme kind of film, one that penetrates on every level. I didn't feel anything as deeply as I did this film this year; it made me want to come home and curl up next to my wife, safe, warm. Liam Neeson's performance has been vastly underrated as he's tapped into some deep, real-life fissures here, and Carnahan's vision of fighting off grief, staving off inner darkness, it resonates profoundly with me and landed just right. It is way more than mere genre: it's an elemental tale, and it is, in my humble opinion, the best film of 2012.