News

Is Liam Neeson Giving Up the Gun?

Liam Neeson giving up on hunting down enemies, looking for more serious roles.
By  · Published on September 13th, 2017

Liam Neeson giving up on hunting down enemies, looking for more serious roles.

Liam Neeson has had enough of action movies. While he has had a fine collection of high-caliber dramatic roles like Schindler’s List and Silence, he is best known for his action movies. Unfortunately, it seems as if his action days are over. In an interview with Sky News, he said that those days are over. It was “all a pure accident” that those opportunities came his way this late in his career. He added that “They’re still throwing serious money at me to do that stuff. “I’m like: ‘Guy’s I’m sixty-f******-five.’ Audiences are eventually going to go: ‘Come on.'”

Neeson had quite a few action movies before his iconic turn in 2008’s Taken. He took to the streets for a massive battle in Gangs of New York and then he mentored a young Batman in Batman Begins. Taken was another thing entirely. In the genre of ‘old men who still kick ass’, Taken saw Neeson as a retired CIA operative trying to save his daughter. Neeson was racking up a large body count long before Reeves’ John Wick lit up the screen. Even if the Taken series was seeing diminishing returns in story and box office, there are few operatives like Neeson’s Bryan Mills.

Since Taken and its sequels have been released Neeson has almost exclusively done action movies. Sure he has done voice work in movies like A Monster Calls and The Prophet, but with movies Run All NightNon-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones and The Grey he has continued to be an action star for many of the last ten years. Even if Neeson says he is done, he does have two more action films in post-production right now. And there is no guarantee this will stick. If Harrison Ford is still taking on action film roles, certainly Neeson can continue doing this style of work.

Related Topics:

News Writer/Columnist for Film School Rejects. It’s the Pictures Co-host. Bylines Playboy, ZAM, Paste Magazine and more.