Liam Neeson arrives at the gala screening of Taken for the 7th annual edition of the TCM crime scene festival to mark the film’s UK release, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, central London. (Photo by Ian West – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
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While Taken was not the first time Liam Neeson had headlined an action movie (Darkman, Rob Roy and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace come to mind), the surprise sleeper smash over Super Bowl weekend 2009 began a new third-act for Neeson’s career.
Not unlike Nicolas Cage, what began as a certain skewed irony (in Cage’s case going from winning an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas to starring in The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off) to conventional wisdom and par for the course.
What made Taken unique and unusual (a lean-n-mean action thriller with Neeson as a man of action) has now become his stock-and-trade. As The Marksman opens in theaters today, exactly three months after Honest Thief, I looked back at Neeson’s post-Taken action hero run, well, counting Taken.
I am bemused at A) how much Taken is an outlier in terms of this baker’s dozen list of action dramas and Hitchcockian thrillers and B) how often Neeson plays not an awesome man of action but a proverbial loser given one last shot at making a difference. In some ways, he’s actually spent the last 12 years making hybrids of Cary Grant’s North By Northwest and John Wayne’s The Shootist.
And now, without further ado, I have used math, science and dark magic to correctly rank Neeson’s last decade’s worth of action movies. This is specifically for leading roles, all due respect to Clash of the Titans, Men in Black International and Widows
My list will not be your list, because what fun would that be? And as for future Neeson flicks, presuming he doesn’t retire from the genre quite yet, I want a movie where he embarks on a quest to rescue director Jaume Collet-Serra from the clutches of Dwayne Johnson.
Taken 3 (2015)
Budget: $48 million
Domestic box office: $89 million
Worldwide box office: $326 million
Olivier Megaton’s abysmal sequel is infamous for its “Liam Neeson takes 15 edits to hop a fence” action sequences.
It’s also a lazy, ugly and cruel actioner that could qualify as a deconstruction of the Taken series (in which Bryan Mills not only fails to protect his ex-wife but indirectly causes her murder as part of a plot by the baddies to unleash his vengeance upon the alleged culprits) if it wasn’t so oblivious in its random chaos.
Yeah, this one is easily Neeson’s worst action vehicle before or after Taken, so bad it almost makes Taken 2 look halfway decent by comparison. But don’t be fooled!
Taken 2 (2012)
Budget: $45 million
Domestic box office: $140 million
Worldwide box office: $376 million
This Megaton-directed follow-up blows off the obvious sequel hook (seeing Mills and his mercenary pals doing a job) in favor of a skewed rehash of the first film.
This “Bryan and his family are kidnapped while on holiday” actioner offers a few interesting ideas (that the first film’s wish-fulfillment violence comes at a cost as Neeson is targeted by the father of one of Taken’s many casualties) and one creative set piece (Maggie Grace saving her parents by tossing grenades out of car as a means of “Marco Polo”).
But otherwise, it’s stinker of a sequel, unafraid to even commit to its interesting climax (whereby Neeson and arch-baddie Rade Šerbedžija agree to break the cycle of violence).
The Marksman (2021)
Budget: NA
Domestic box office: NA
Worldwide box office: NA
Today’s newbie is in the same sandbox as Rambo: Last Blood, Blood Father and Logan. Neeson plays past-his-prime loner, a Vietnam vet about to lose his home and mourning the death of his wife, who is given a proverbial last chance to make a difference when he is forced to defend a child from nefarious forces.
In this case, the kid is a border-crossing “illegal immigrant,” and the antagonists are Mexican drug cartel baddies. The film tries to have it both ways, offering a grizzled American hero who softens his heart on immigration while providing “bad hombres” for him to eventually kill.
It’s sparse and unsentimental, but it’s also light on action and is so cavalier about collateral damage that you start to wonder whether Neeson should have just left the kid with the cops.
The A-Team (2010)
Budget: $110 million
Domestic box office: $77 million
Worldwide box office: $177 million
This comparatively soulless TV-to-movie adaptation commits the cardinal sin of spending its entire running time as a prequel/set-up for the sequel that will never be. Joe Carnahan offers a sturdy action picture, albeit one hamstrung by franchise demands, a PG-13 and a source material that was infamous for having a bare-minimum body count.
In a skewed way, this film is a prime example of how Hollywood looked at surprise original hits and tried to turn their top-billed stars into franchise-headlining action leads. In this case, this played as Liam Neeson’s pay-off for Taken, Bradley Cooper’s cash-in for The Hangover and Sharlto Copley’s “reward” for District 9, all of which were breakout original sleeper hits the prior year.
Honest Thief (2020)
Budget: ??
Domestic box office: $14 million
Worldwide box office: $29 million
The Mark Williams-directed pot-boiler concerns an over-the-hill bank robber who tries to turn himself in and give back the money in exchange for a light sentence. His plans to go straight for love (personified by Kate Walsh) backfires when the FBI agents kill their superior officer (Robert Patrick) and steal the money for themselves.
Jai Courtney chews into his bad guy role (like a lot of “next Tom Cruise who wasn’t” contenders, Courtney is better as a rogue than as a hero), Anthony Ramos is a surprisingly sympathetic co-antagonist and Jeffrey Donovan plays way against type as an exceptionally nice federal agent who is smart enough to suspect shenanigans. This small-scale thriller compensates for its low-stakes action with plenty of time afforded to plot and character.
Budget: $30 million
Domestic box office: $64 million
Worldwide box office: $136 million
This Warner Bros. release was the first of several partnerships with Jaume Collet-Serra. Unknown features Neeson as a guy who wakes up from a four-day coma with no one in his life remembering him and another guy claiming to be “Martin Harris.” The film accidentally gives away its twists early on while killing time before the big reveals.
]It pretzels itself into justifying the post-Taken fisticuffs. Nonetheless, it’s enjoyable trash, with strong work from Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella. There is a difference between not taking a film seriously and being almost required to not become emotionally-invested in the narrative. Unknown is truly a Hitchcock film, but even Hitch made the occasional Marnie or I Confess.
Non-Stop (2014)
Budget: $50 million
Domestic box office: $92 million
Worldwide box office: $223 million
This Universal release was, financially speaking, the peak of Neeson’s drawing power in a non-Taken star vehicle. The Jaume Collett-Serra flick stars Neeson as an alcoholic dead-beat air marshal who starts getting text messages from someone on his packed flight threatening to kill passengers every twenty minutes unless a ransom is paid.
When folks start dropping dead in mid-air, well, the game is afoot unless he is actually the bad guy. Despite a last-minute attempt at political relevance, the high-flying Hitchcockian riff just wants to play its audience like a piano.
A strong bench of supporting actors (Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stoll, etc.) offers a deluge of viable suspects, and the film delights in teasing that the face-on-the-poster movie star may be the secret baddie.
A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
Budget: $28 million
Domestic box office: $26 million
Worldwide box office: $59 million
In a skewed irony, A Walk Among the Tombstones went head-to-head with the guy who “invented” the modern “old man out for a kill” actioner and Denzel Washington’s more conventionally crowdpleasing The Equalizer just beat the stuffing out of Neeson’s disturbing and unapologetically unpleasant crime drama.
Neeson plays a down-on-his-luck private eye who used to be a cop before he accidentally shot a civilian during a pursuit. He gets pulled into a tale of two sexual sadists kidnapping and torturing wives (and eventually daughters) of known drug dealers, and the whole film is every bit as grim as that sounds. Its emphasis is on character over action, and it’s a rock-solid piece of hard-boiled film noir.
The Commuter (2018)
Budget: $30 million
Domestic box office: $36 million
Worldwide box office: $120 million
While we tend to think of Neeson as an invincible superman thanks to the Taken franchise, his work with Jaume Collet-Serra has inverted that image, casting Neeson as down-on-his-luck or hopelessly confused protagonists who must eventually do the right thing no matter the cost to himself.
This excellent example features Neeson playing an ex-cop who has just been laid off from his longtime job as an insurance salesman. A family to support leaves him potentially ripe for the plucking when a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) offers him a cast payout in exchange for locating a passenger on his train.
The picture works as a genre exercise as well as offering earned and authentic class-based resentment while presenting us with Collett-Serra’s most conventionally noble Neeson protagonist.
Run All Night (2015)
Budget: $50 million
Domestic box office: $26 million
Worldwide box office: $72 million
As updated variations of The Road to Perdition go, Run All Night is a good one. Liam Neeson stars as former hit man for a local crime boss (Ed Harris) who is forced to protect his estranged son (Joel Kinneman) after the young husband/father witnesses a gangland murder. It’s a variation on Hitchcock’s “innocent man on the run” formula, with Neeson’s anti-hero protecting Michael and his family.
The Jaume Collet-Serra-directed film eventually falls prey to “action for action’s sake,” but there is a pretty terrific and mournful crime drama (whereby Neeson’s boozer is deemed so useless that pleas to die in his son’s place fall on deaf ears) and an equally intense thriller hidden inside this dark actioner.
Taken (2009)
Budget: $25 million
Domestic box office: $145 million
Worldwide box office: $227 million
The one that started it all now feels entirely disconnected with most of the Neeson-led actioners that followed. Directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson, this surprise smash hit used Neeson’s image as a prestigious actor.
Neeson specialized in respectable dramas and/or providing mentorship to everyone from Batman to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Here was Neeson as a leading man in an unapologetic grindhouse action thriller with a primal hook (underappreciated dad uses his Green Beret/CIA skills to rescue his teen daughter from overseas sex traffickers).
The first 2/3 of this picture is focused on investigation as opposed to non-stop fisticuffs and carnage. This is a B movie that has the sheen, polish and ripping entertainment value of an A picture.
The Grey (2012)
Budget: $25 million
Domestic box office: $52 million
Worldwide box office: $80 million
Joe Carnahan helmed this grim and thoughtful mediation on coming to terms with death, a film that Open Road successfully sold as a “Liam Neeson punches wolves” actioner. When the movie is good, audiences don’t mind the deception.
The film stars Neeson as an unofficial leader as he and his fellow oil workers survive a brutal plane crash only to end up hunted by wolves.
Again, it’s more of a masculine drama than a thriller, but it’s a unique and engrossing movie that also works as meditation on grief (Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, had died in a skiing accident three years prior) and a spiritual drama for those who want their faith-based cinema to be a bit less on the nose.
Cold Pursuit (2019)
Budget: $60 million
Domestic box office: $32 million
Worldwide box office: $76 million
Despite conventional wisdom arguing that Liam Neeson’s action star career has been about macho men seeking righteous revenge against swarthy foreigners (and all of the icky politics that go with that), the vast majority of his films are about over-the-hill cops or criminals reluctantly taking up the sword to protect someone or solve an in-progress crime.
As such, this ghoulish black comedy, a remake of In Order of Disappearance, stands out as a Neeson vehicle featuring a retiring snowplow driver seeking vengeance for the murder of his adult son.
Whether this is intended as a commentary upon or outright spoof of the stereotypical Neeson actioner, this wintery crime comedy is both hilariously violent and violently hilarious.
It’s filled with fully-sketched characters who feel like the stars of their own story, and the dialogue feels like a cross between a Coen Brothers flick, a Tarantino joint and City Slickers.
As the bereaved father’s quest for retribution instigates a mob war that frustrates the criminal elements and flummoxes the small-town cops not used to dealing with real violence.
Tom Bateman, Julia Jones, Emmy Rossum, Tom Jackson and Laura Linney are just a few of the folks who populate this true ensemble picture.
It’s to Neeson’s credit that he lets everyone else steal the spotlight, and the end result is an Altman-worthy crime comedy cleverly disguised as a Liam Neeson action movie.
