There’s a scene in the 1971 sci-fi cult classic The Omega Man where Charlton Heston’s helicopter is crash-landing, and just before the moment of impact it flies into an embankment just below the camera’s POV… where the craft’s explosion happens safely off-screen. It was a cheapo move in 1971 – they clearly didn’t really blow up the helicopter – and it’s a cheapo move in 2026, too, when Liam Neeson’s The Mongoose – now, somehow, playing at a multiplex near you! – pulls a similar stunt.

Sure, in The Mongoose the helicopter doesn’t even blow up off-camera, but that’s not the point (the crash-landing winds up being played for a laugh instead). What I’m talking about here is the threadbare sense that such a moment evokes for the viewer, the “a third of the budget of this movie must’ve gone to Liam Neeson” feeling that permeates the not-quite high-octane, not-quite thrilling picture.

And yet, there’s a likability factor wafting around this story, thanks largely to Neeson’s disarming “yeah, I am taking a third of this film’s budget, and I’m gonna have fun doing it” affectation as he drives a stolen hotrod – do we still call them hotrods? – across various states while on the run from the police due to a crime he did not commit. Along for the ride, so to speak, are Ving Rhames, Marisa Tomei, and Michael Chiklis, all cashing in less than a third of the budget, presumably, but hitting their marks efficiently enough to get this thing over the finish line in a “Maybe just catch it on Prime Video eventually” kind of way.

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