Audiences can always rely on Liam Neeson to deliver the goods in a mid budget genre thriller, but critics haven’t been left as impressed as the grizzled veteran’s fans.
That’s not to say he makes awful movies, but they’re all cut from a very similar cloth, one that people have been happy to indulge since Taken reinvented the acclaimed character actor as an action hero thirteen years ago.
His three outings as Bryan Mills, along with various other titles including Unknown, Run All Night, The Commuter, Honest Thief, The Marksman, The Ice Road and others can always be relied on to do a turn at the box office or on streaming, but reviews have been middling at best.
In fact, the only straightforward Neeson runners and gunners to rack up Fresh Rotten Tomatoes scores in the last decade are Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones and Cold Pursuit, the latter of which holds the highest rating at a perfectly acceptable 68%.
It’s now back in a big way on streaming, with the chilly adventure having been climbing the Netflix most-watched list all week, as per FlixPatrol. Cold Pursuit finds Neeson as a snowplow driver investigating the mysterious death of his son, who finds himself pitted against a drug lord called Viking in a film that featured heavy lashings of absurd comedy, while a sequel has even been rumored.