The Mongoose reaches theaters on Friday, October 30, built around the kind of chase that plays better on a big screen than a phone. Liam Neeson stars as Ryan Flanagan, a decorated war veteran wrongly accused of a crime, who takes off across the country with half the police force on his tail and an entire television audience watching the pursuit unfold live.
Marisa Tomei plays Tara, the woman Flanagan turns to as the chase stretches on, and Ving Rhames is Tanker, the old Army friend who will not let him run alone. On the other side of the radio is a commanding officer determined to bring the chase to a clean end before it turns into a spectacle nobody can control.
The most interesting credit here sits behind the camera. Mark Vanselow has spent more than two decades as Neeson's stunt double and stunt coordinator, working through the Taken trilogy and both Ice Road films, and coordinating action on The Revenant and Get Out. The Mongoose is his first time directing a feature, and he is doing it with the actor he has spent twenty years falling off buildings for.
Flanagan's getaway car is a Shelby Super Snake, a Mustang variant tuned past 800 horsepower, and the film leans into the idea that one fast, loud car can hold a news cycle hostage. It is a premise with real bite: a fugitive the public ends up rooting for, broadcast live, with the police forced to look restrained or heavy handed depending on how the story breaks.
Fourteen days out, The Mongoose looks like a rare studio throwback: a practical car chase thriller built around a director who has spent his whole career making stunts look effortless for someone else, finally getting the chance to do it on his own terms. It opens in theaters Friday, October 30.
