MOVIE NEWS – Liam Neeson’s latest action thriller, The Fix, has managed something surprisingly uncommon for one of his movies: critics are largely on the same page. Unfortunately for Neeson, Zachary Levi, and director Guy Moshe, that consensus is overwhelmingly negative, with the film opening at just 19% on Rotten Tomatoes and drifting dangerously close to the lowest-rated territory of Neeson’s career.

Liam Neeson has spent much of the past two decades making thrillers that inspire wildly different reactions. Even some of his least celebrated action vehicles have usually found critics willing to defend them, making genuine consensus relatively unusual. The Fix, however, appears to have eliminated much of that disagreement. Guy Moshe’s new film debuted with a bleak 19% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, turning one of Neeson’s newest action outings into a surprisingly unified target.

Released in U.S. theaters on September 11 after being renamed from Hotel Tehran earlier in the summer, the movie stars Zachary Levi as Tucker, a former CIA team leader still haunted by a disastrous operation in Afghanistan. Neeson plays Larry, the veteran operative responsible for training him. Their story sends Tucker and his old crew into Tehran for a rescue mission that gradually expands into an opportunity for redemption and a potentially life-changing heist.

At 141 minutes, the film gives itself plenty of room to combine military trauma, personal loyalties, geopolitical tension, and elaborate robbery mechanics. The problem, judging by the early reviews, is that those pieces never become a convincing whole. Its 19% Rotten Tomatoes rating already places it within striking distance of Neeson’s critical low points, with Blacklight sitting at 11% and titles such as The Nut Job and Taken 3 also occupying the lower end of his filmography.

Critics Say the Heist, the Relationships, and the Geopolitical Thriller All Miss the Mark

RogerEbert.com’s Glenn Kenny was particularly unforgiving in his assessment. His review argues that the movie fails on several fronts at once: the central relationships do not work strongly enough for the buddy-movie element, the robbery material never delivers what its setup promises, and the geopolitical thriller surrounding those elements does not come together convincingly. In other words, the negative response is not being blamed on one isolated weakness, but on the film’s inability to make its different genres reinforce each other.

Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times was similarly dismissive, describing the movie as badly timed, trivializing, and excessively overblown. The release date inevitably adds another layer to that reaction: an American military thriller involving the Middle East opened on September 11, exactly 25 years after the terrorist attacks. The story itself is fictional, but the historical weight attached to that date created a context some critics clearly found impossible to separate from the movie.

There had been reason to expect a more assured result before reviews arrived. Neeson spoke enthusiastically about Moshe’s screenplay in an interview with WCNC, praising the way it combined action and heist mechanics with what he considered a genuinely human core. He was also intrigued by Moshe’s own background as a special operations soldier in the late 1990s, which suggested the filmmaker could bring a degree of personal understanding to the military side of the material.

The Fix May Be a Much Bigger Problem for Zachary Levi Than for Liam Neeson

Levi was equally confident about the finished movie before release. He described a story built from drama, action, mystery, reversals, and the human emotions underneath all of them. Ironically, the critical reaction suggests that the sheer number of those ingredients may be part of the issue. Rather than producing a richer thriller, the film appears to have pulled itself in too many directions without giving any one of them enough room to become fully persuasive.

For Neeson, a score this low is unlikely to produce lasting damage. His career is backed by decades of high-profile performances, major audience favorites, and enough accumulated goodwill that another poorly reviewed thriller is more likely to register as an unfortunate detour than a defining setback. He also has additional projects already lined up, giving him little reason to dwell on one hostile Rotten Tomatoes reception.

Levi has more at stake. Since the Shazam! era, several of his choices have struggled either commercially, critically, or both, making a well-received action thriller potentially much more valuable for his momentum. At least for now, The Fix does not appear to be that movie. A 19% Rotten Tomatoes debut instead leaves another uncomfortable question hanging over what comes next for him.

Source: MovieWeb