The best Liam Neeson action movies, from Taken to Batman Begins

Once upon a time, Liam Neeson looked like an unlikely Hollywood action man. During the 1980s and 1990s, he cemented himself as a versatile and talented actor, appearing in hefty dramas and scoring a handful of major awards nominations. But in the 2000s, in the wake of his 50th birthday, he gear-shifted and became a bruising, feared action lead.

He has starred in dozens of action movies in the years since and, it's fair to say, the quality has been variable. Some of them are modern genre classics, while others are direct-to-streaming slop of the least imaginative kind. One of his most recent movies, Memory, is flying high on Netflix, so we're taking the opportunity to look back at the best of Neeson the action man.

Based on Rotten Tomatoes critic scores, here are the 10 best Liam Neeson action movies. And if you disagree with this list, Liam will find you, and he will kill you. Probably.

10=. Unknown (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%

One of Neeson's many collaborations with action specialist Jaume Collet-Serra, Unknown is a fun little thriller in which he plays a professor who wakes from a coma to find that his entire existence has been wiped. His wife is with another man and there's another Dr Harris, who has far more evidence of his existence than Neeson does.

Read more: Liam Neeson producing Unknown sequel series (Cover Media)

Unknown goes in ludicrous directions in its final act, but it spends the bulk of its time being an enjoyable paranoid thriller with an engrossing mystery at its heart. Neeson is using all of his skills here, not just his comfort with a gun in his hand.

10=. The Commuter (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%

We've seen Liam Neeson star in action movies based around just about every kind of mode of transport at this point. I have a soft spot for the plane-set silliness of Non-Stop, but critics preferred The Commuter, in which Neeson plays a former cop dragged into a murderous conspiracy on a commuter train.

It's fun enough hokum, with Neeson on suitably grizzled form and again benefiting from Collet-Serra's action flair behind the camera. There are some excellent bits of close-quarters combat. Look out, also, for a brief and welcome appearance from the brilliant Florence Pugh.

9. Run All Night (2015)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59%

It's yet another Collet-Serra collaboration, with the extra twist that Neeson's character is now a former underworld hitman with the ominous moniker The Gravedigger. There's a father-son element too, with Neeson's character forced to go on the run to help his estranged son, who has become embroiled in the death of a mobster's son.

Read more: Run All Night: Exclusive Interview With Liam Neeson & Ed Harris (MyMovies)

The plot is a mess and lacks the single-location simplicity of some of Neeson's sillier action movies. But there's enough here to make it worth a watch.

8. Taken (2008)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 60%

Arguably, Pierre Morel's surprise success Taken was the movie that marked Neeson's transition into being a fully-fledged man of action. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, who's a former CIA operative with "a very particular skills". He takes on the human trafficking gang responsible for kidnapping his daughter, delivering sinister and threatening phone calls on the way.

Read more: Liam Neeson was not a fan of his iconic Taken speech (Yahoo Entertainment)

Taken is an admirably gritty thriller that showed Neeson was absolutely made for this genre. The less said about the tedious pair of sequels — and that infamous shot of Neeson scaling a fence with the help of some rapid-fire camera cuts —the better.

6=. A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

There's a lot less running around and shooting at stuff in this Neeson outing. It's a grimy and violent neo-noir with a far more serious tone than you'd expect from years of watching Neeson have fun with Collet-Serra. Here, he works with Logan screenwriter Scott Frank and plays a private investigator looking into the murder of a drug trafficker's wife.

A Walk Among the Tombstones got a better critical reaction than some of Neeson's sillier work, but that sombre tone also makes it a lot less entertaining. Neeson is always watchable, though, and in some ways it was refreshing to see him flex his more serious muscles.

6=. Cold Pursuit (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

In Cold Pursuit, Liam Neeson plays a vengeful snow plough driver. Yep, he really does. It's a simple elevator pitch and one that screams chilly thrills. After the murder of his son, Neeson's character is driven to track down and kill all of the people responsible.

Neeson is one of modern cinema's most enjoyable one-man armies and, this time around, he's helped by the addition of some Laura Dern gravitas. Some of the attempts at turning this into a black comedy are a little ropey, but it's still Neeson taking on a load of crooks. That's always worth a look.

5. The Grey (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

Famously, this is the movie in which Liam Neeson punched a wolf. As opposed to taking on an army of drug dealers or a human trafficking gang, The Grey pits Neeson against the elements. He and a group of other men are stranded in the wilderness, where they have to survive in horrific conditions and with hungry wolves circling.

Read more: 'The Grey' Proves it: Liam Neeson is an Action Star (The Wrap)

Director Joe Carnahan caught Neeson in the early phase of his action career, before everything got self-referential and silly. The result is a surprisingly existential action movie that allows Neeson to use his physical pedigree and his acting chops in equal measure.

3=. In the Land of Saints and Sinners (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Neeson's recognisable Irish accent finally fits the character in this Netflix thriller, in which he plays a character called Finbar Murphy. Finbar lives in a quiet village, which becomes a lot noisier when an IRA bomber on the run from the law shows up and starts throwing his weight around. Step forward, Vigilante Neeson. He's a former hitman who was trying to live a quiet life, but now has to dust off his killing skills.

This is definitely one of Neeson's more acclaimed action movies, helped by a change in context from the anonymous American cities he normally ends up running around. He's also assisted by the presence of some big-name Irish performers, including Colm Meaney and Kerry Condon.

3=. Darkman (1990)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Before Sam Raimi made Spider-Man in the 2000s, he made another superhero movie. The director had really wanted to make a film about The Shadow, but couldn't get the rights and so decided to come up with a new hero of his own. Neeson was brought in to play Dr. Peyton Westlake, who is burned alive and left for dead, but survives with enhanced strength.

Read more: Liam Neeson 'not a fan' of superhero movies (Cover Media)

It might have come around almost two decades before Taken, but Darkman has a lot of the elements of the Neeson action movie. He plays a one-man army seeking revenge against those who have wronged him. Its reputation has grown significantly in the years since its initial release and it's seen as something of a cult classic.

2. Batman Begins (2005)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

When Christopher Nolan is behind the camera, the quality is always going to be high. The British director certainly gave superhero movies a shot in the arm when he mounted what would become a trilogy of Batman movies starring Christian Bale. The first of those films, Batman Begins, featured Neeson as the villain Ra's al Ghul — leader of the secretive League of Shadows.

Read more: Before Batman Begins: Secret History Of The Movies That Almost Got Made (Yahoo Entertainment)

It was Begins' follow-up, The Dark Knight, that would routinely end up on lists of the best movies ever made but, for me, Begins is the peak of the trilogy. It's a thoughtful superhero film with some truly terrific performances. Neeson is one of those.

1. Widows (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

Neeson doesn't have a huge role in Widows — Steve McQueen's female-led heist movie. However, his early scenes with Viola Davis make a big impact. It's a less action-packed performance than we've come to expect in this phase of his career, but he helps to fire the starting pistol on a narrative that proves to be genuinely thrilling.

In some ways, Widows trades on Neeson's reputation and uses his action man credentials to wrong-foot the audience. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth tracking it down and enjoying its gripping take on the classic British TV series that inspired it.