Liam Neeson’s new movie Retribution debuts on Rotten Tomatoes with a negative score, continuing a negative trend that has been plaguing the star.
SUMMARY
Liam Neeson’s latest film, Retribution, continues his streak of low-rated movies, receiving a disappointing 30% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
This marks Neeson’s eighth consecutive Rotten movie, indicating a notable decline in critical reception for his action films.
Retribution continues a negative Rotten Tomatoes trend for star Liam Neeson.
The movie, which is a remake of the 2015 Spanish movie El desconocido, was helmed by Predators and Stranger Things director Nimród Antal.
It stars Neeson as Matt Turner, a financier who receives a call informing him that there is a bomb in his car while he is driving his kids to school, plunging him into a high-octane game of cat and mouse.
Ahead of the Retribution release date on August 25, Rotten Tomatoes has released a low score.
At the time of writing, it has a firmly Rotten score of 30 percent.
While it will fluctuate as more reviews are added throughout the weekend, such a low score likely indicates that it will remain Rotten, becoming Neeson’s eighth officially Rotten movie in a row.
The star hasn’t received a Fresh score from critics since 2019, with the romantic drama Ordinary Love.
Is Liam Neeson’s Stint As An Action Hero On Its Last Legs?
Before 2008, Liam Neeson was best known for his work in dramas, including Kinsey, Les Misérables (1998), and Schindler’s List, the latter of which earned him an Oscar nomination.
However, 2008 saw the premiere of Taken, in which Neeson plays ex-CIA agent Brian Mills, who fights to save his kidnapped daughter.
This kicked off a new phase of his career, and Liam Neeson played an action hero in more than a dozen movies afterward, including Taken 2, Taken 3, Unknown, Non-Stop, The Commuter, and Cold Pursuit.
Neeson’s run of high-octane action movies even earned him his own parody movie, 2015’s Tooken, which starred Lee Tergesen as “Bryan Millers.”
While quite a few of these Neeson actioners have been box office hits, the negative critical reaction to them has been present since Taken itself, which earned a borderline 59 percent.
However, audience scores for Neeson’s action movies have plunged recently as well, dropping from Taken‘s 85 percent in 2008 to The Ice Road‘s 31 percent and Cold Pursuit‘s 49 percent, both of which were even lower than the critics’ scores for those more recent movies.
The negative streak that Retribution perpetuates isn’t all action movies, however.
The list also includes titles such as the crime drama Marlowe and the 2020 romance Made in Italy.
However, action titles are still overwhelmingly represented on the list with continuing negative results.
While the success of Taken has created lucrative action projects for the star for a decade and a half, if these results continue to worsen, his stint in the genre may soon come to an end.
