Director Mark Vanselow
Starring Liam Neeson, Marisa Tomei, Ving Rhames, and Michael Chiklis.
Rated M
Score 1/6

A highly decorated combat vet, Ryan ”Fang” Flanagan, is fleeing a murder scene at 130 miles an hour in a Mustang Shelby Super Snake GT350.

Another Liam Neeson action movie, is that a good thing? Maybe not. In my opinion Neeson’s action movies started becoming a little hit and miss after the release of Taken 3 in 2014 and having a first time director might not have been the best choice for the director’s chair even if Mark Vanselow is primarily known for his work as a stunt coordinator. Reading up about The Mongoose I found out that there was a lot of critics making comparisons between The Mongoose and Smokey and the Bandit. Yeah,I suppose you could do that with every single movie released after 1977 set in the southern states of the USA featuring a fast car. But what really lets that down is Michael Chiklis’ performance as Major Walter Pope which clearly was a family friendly homage to Jackie Gleason’s performance as Sheriff Buford T. Justice and Mark Vanselow did a poor job at hiding the fact that the movie was filmed in Australia. Now, if you want to go making comparisons between The Mongoose and American road action movies from the 1970’s a stronger argument can be made to compare The Mongoose to Convoy released in 1978 and directed by Sam Peckinpah. Especially if you take into consideration The Mongoose actually has a strong social message (unlike Smokey and the Bandit) and The Moongoose’s climax was clearly influenced by Convoy.