Liam Neeson’s New Action Thriller Officially Finds Redemption on Streaming

Published Nov 15, 2026, 8:30 AM EST

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 4000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio. 

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Liam Neeson and action movies go hand in hand. The star of the genre's modern masterpiece Taken is never far from another actioner, even bringing back one of the genre's funniest franchises in 2025. Neeson joined forces with Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl) and Paul Walter Hauser (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) in The Naked Gun, earning rave reviews for his lead performance that Leslie Nielsen would've been proud of.

"If this is the start of a new rebooted franchise's legacy, it'd be difficult to complain," wrote Aidan Kelley in his review of The Naked Gun for Collider, one of many full of praise. This sort of praise is the stuff of dreams for Neeson's latest project, which has been widely panned by critics. The Mongoose, a high-octane thriller directed by Neeson's long-time stunt double Mark Vanselow in his feature debut, was released late last month and was met with some of the worst reviews in Neeson's career.

"How long can Liam Neeson keep doing this?" said ScreenRant's Alex Harrison in a 3/10 review, in which he also called the film "a lazy mess" that is "only made enjoyable by how unintentionally funny it is." The additions of Marisa Tomei (Spider-Man: Brand New Day), Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning), Michael Chiklis (The Senior), and Maurice Marvel Meredith (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) couldn't save the film from critical destruction, but its fortunes on the small screen are proving much better. At the time of writing, The Mongoose is one of the ten most-watched movies on Prime Video in the world.

COLLIDERInteractive

Impact

Action/Quizzes/Your Franchise

Collider QuizWhat Action Series
Would You Thrive In?8 Questions · 4 FranchisesFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the professional with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to go down. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.The Four

Wick

Fast

Mission

Die Hard

Find Your Franchise

Beat 01 / 080% Shot

Question 01PRESENCE

01How does a room know you've walked into it?Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognizes me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said.BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something.CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived.DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 02 / 0812% Shot

Question 02COMBAT

02It turns physical. What does your fighting look like?Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started.BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup.CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving.DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more punishment than I deal and I still don't go down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 03 / 0825% Shot

Question 03CREW

03Who is standing beside you when it starts?Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favors and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone.BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them.CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself.DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 04 / 0838% Shot

Question 04PRESSURE

04It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright?Act two exists to find out what you're really made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction.BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line.CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me.DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 05 / 0850% Shot

Question 05WHEELS

05There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how?No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it.BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion.CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorized last night. And then off a cliff.DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 06 / 0862% Shot

Question 06ORDERS

06How do you feel about the people giving the orders?There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me.BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out.CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second.DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one standing on broken glass.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 07 / 0875% Shot

Question 07MOTIVE

07Underneath all of it, what are you doing this for?The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since.BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything.CThe conviction that if I stop, people pay for it. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else.DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defense.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 08 / 0888% Shot

Question 08LEGEND

08When the credits roll, what do people say about you?Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to.BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table.CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me.DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to stop.

← BackPick one, then Next

Reveal My Franchise

Casting Has Been CompletedYour Franchise Is

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

2014-2023John WickJohn Wick to Chapter 4Reasonable to the line. Immovable past it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.Why You Would Thrive Here

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honors every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

The CodeNo Wasted MotionSay It Quietly

2001-2023Fast & FuriousThe Fast and the Furious to Fast XThe mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its real subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Found FamilyRide TogetherPhysics Optional

1996-2025Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible to The Final ReckoningYou have never once delegated the cliff.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Over-PreparedOwn The RiskStill Running

1988-2013Die HardDie Hard to A Good Day to Die HardYou declined to be the person who let it happen.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.Why You Would Thrive Here

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outnumbered, out-planned, battered, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

Wrong PlaceImprovisesStill Standing

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The Movie Was an Instant Box Office Disaster

Image via Samuel Goldwyn Films / Courtesy Everett Collection

Although the film was never intended to be this season's big new action blockbuster, there's no doubt that those in charge of The Mongoose will be bitterly disappointed by its box office performance. The film debuted on the big screen two weeks ago, only managing just over $400,000 from 1,014 theaters. In its second weekend, The Mongoose dropped by a staggering 83% in ticket sales, no doubt due to being removed from almost all of its locations.

The Mongoose is one of the ten most-watched movies on Prime Video in the world. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Cast

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  Ryan "Fang" Flanagan

• 

  Tara

• 

  Tanker

• 

  Major Walter Pope