New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: Run All Night, Liam Neeson's latest "old guy kicking ass" project, debuted with $11 million. What do you think of this result?

Edwin Davies: This result, along with the underwhelming performance of Taken 3 and the pretty poor showing for A Walk Among the Tombstones, suggests that audiences are getting a little tired of Liam Neeson's action movie phase, or that he might have over saturated the market in the past year. An interesting comparison would be Non-Stop, which came out around the same time last year, was also directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, but opened to more than double what Run All Night did ($28.8 million) and ended up grossing more than Taken 3 ($92.1 million vs. $88.3 million). Non-Stop, in addition to having a stronger gimmick in its killer on a plane mystery, was the first action movie Neeson had starred in since Taken 2 in 2012 (or The Dark Knight Rises, but we can probably ignore that since he was only in one scene and that film is an entirely different beast). Demand had built up in the intervening time, during which Neeson only did voiceover work, which, combined with a good premise, got people excited to see a new Liam Neeson vehicle.

Fast forward to this weekend, and Run All Night a) didn't have a particularly unique premise and b) is the third Liam Neeson movie in six months. On top of that, it's coming out when memories of Taken 3, which seemed to sour a lot of people on Neeson's signature franchise, are still fresh. Had Taken 3 been better, or at least been a bigger hit, people might be looking forward to a new Liam Neeson movie, but that is not the case.

I don't think this means that Neeson is necessarily through as an action star, though. He just needs to take a bit of a break from those sort of films. Taken 2 followed a run of action movies - The Grey, Unknown, Battleship, Wrath of the Titans, The A-Team - which were either critically or commercially limp, but he took a break and came back strong with Non-Stop. His next few films are all in wildly different genres - Ted 2 is a comedy, A Monster Calls is a fantasy drama, and Silence is a Martin Scorsese movie about priests in 17th century Japan - so I think he has probably decided that he needs a break from breaking people. If he comes back to action after those films, he could probably still deliver another hit, assuming that he doesn't want Run All Night to stand as the capstone to this part of his career.

Jason Barney: The opening numbers for Run All Night are not exactly great, but I am going to reserve judgment. The budget was a fairly expensive $50 million, and this opening is not very strong. This appears to be a bit more of an expensive gamble than A Walk Among The Tombstones, as that one was made for nearly $20 million less. It is going to be a lot harder for Run All Night to break even.

Still, even with fans not embracing this one, Liam Neeson continues to be one of the busiest actors and best earners in the business. It was only a few months ago that Taken 3 did absolutely fine and that franchise has earned oodles of cash. Non-Stop. The Grey. Somehow most of these make money. Let’s not forget his presence in Titans franchise or Batman. This one may not do well, but he is doing fine.

Continued:       1       2       3