Liam Neeson Action Thriller With 87% RT Audience Score Is a Netflix Hit, 5 Years Later

When it hit theaters in 2008, Taken kicked off a new phase of Liam Neeson’s career. He had been in action-focused movies before, e.g. Darkman, The Dead Pool, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but he wasn’t an action star per se. That changed with Taken, which led to similar leading man action vehicles like Unknown, Run All Night, The Commuter, and The Marksman. Some of them were quite good, like The Grey, Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and Cold Pursuit. Some of them are more forgettable fare, e.g. Blacklight, Retribution, Absolution, and the two Taken sequels.

Honest Thief is very much in the latter category as opposed to the former. A fun enough diversion, but little else. Even still, it’s doing quite well on Netflix at the moment.

How Well is Honest Thief Doing on Netflix?

In Honest Thief, Neeson plays Tom Dolan, who has made a career of robbing makes but makes a point of harming no one in the process. He used to be a Marine, and there are certain things he won’t do. But now he’s met graduate student Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh), and he wants to turn his back on his life of crime.

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He even wants to return the money he has stored so he can get a reduced sentence and start a life with Annie. Unfortunately, when he floats this proposition to the FBI, he instead paints a target on his back. Agents Nivens (Jai Courtney) and Baker (Anthony Ramos) instead see a chance to kill their superior and pin it on Tom. Now, after running proves ineffective, Tom must come to terms with the fact he’s going to get violent to get out of this one.

On Netflix’s domestic Top 10 chart for 12/8 through 12/14, Honest Thief was ranked at position seven, ahead of the Mean Girls remake, Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, and A Merry Little Ex-Mas. Ahead of the Neeson movie were Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, My Secret Santa, Jay Kelly, The Covenant (the Jake Gyllenhaal film, not the 2006 fantasy film with Sebastian Stan), KPop Demon Hunters, and The Hustle.

Honest Thief is the type of movie that was embraced by general audience members more than it was critics, and it seems that is still the case. The key source of the film’s appeal is Neeson’s chemistry with Walsh. We believe their romance which really helps us root for Tom in his efforts to claw his way out of the pit the two badge-wearing criminals have dug for him.

Will you give this Honest Thief a chance come movie night? Let us know in the comments.