In the Land of Saints and Sinners
Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films
It feels like Liam Neeson has been remaking the Taken movies for almost 20 years now. He’s some former badass pulled back into combat to rescue someone, kill someone, save a town, and all manner of other motivations. And it turns out, most of these movies do great on Netflix. Liam Neeson holding a gun in a thumbnail? Instant watch.
Most of these movies are…bad. Not that long ago, we had Ice Road: Vengeance taking the #1 spot on the Netflix list, a movie with a 17% critic and 28% audience Rotten Tomatoes score. But that didn’t stop it from being a hit on the service. But now? Currently at #2, we have In the Land of Saints and Sinners, where Liam Neeson is “eager to leave his dark past behind” until he has to fight terrorists in Ireland.
Well, good news! Unlike a dozen other of his post-Taken action movies, this 2023 feature is actually great. It has an 83% from over 80 critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 74% audience score. That’s much higher than usual. I mean, it’s even higher than Taken, which has a 60% critic score (albeit an 85% audience score with 250,000 votes in).
In the Land of Saints and Sinners joins a host of other Neeson movies currently available on Netflix, The Ice Road, The Ice Road: Vengeance, The Marksman, Cold Pursuit and Non-Stop. Movies like the Taken trilogy, The Commuter, Honesty Thief, Unknown, The Grey, Run All Night and A Walk Among the Tombstones used to be there but rotated out. I actually really love The Grey, which has Neeson fighting the weather and wolves instead of terrorists and kidnappers for once.
In the Land of Saints and Sinners is behind only one film on the list right now, The Last House, a heavily-promoted Netflix original horror movie starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura. It is…quite bad, putting up a 27% critic score and 29% audience score. Even if I watch about 40 horror movies a year, I don’t think I’m going to waste my time with this one.
For Sinners, here are some samplings from critics about why it’s so good compared to his other action features:
- Empire – “A solid, old-fashioned Irish Western about what it means to hang up your rifle. It isn’t especially deep, but it’s good to see Liam Neeson find some character depth among the usual shooting and grumbling.”
- Tribune – “In the “Neeson skills” canon, “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” proves to be a gem, the performances elevating an enjoyably pulpy thriller.”
You know, I wonder who has done more of this kind of thing, Neeson or Jason Statham remaking variants of The Transporter for 24 years now. I’d argue most of his are better, but like Neeson’s, they are almost always crowd-pleasers.
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