Published May 30, 2026, 7:46 PM EDT
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
After nearly a decade in the box-office doldrums, Liam Neeson bounced back a few months ago with the hit spoof movie The Naked Gun. It emerged as his first film since 2018’s The Commuter to gross over $100 million at the global box office. Neeson has spent the last decade churning out his trademark action potboilers, while also starring in smaller-scale dramas that have received positive reviews but struggled to attract a large audience. Among these movies is a slick neo-noir that Neeson headlined in 2014; the movie was designed as a possible franchise-starter, but was apparently not successful enough to warrant sequels.
It was directed by Scott Frank, who made his feature debut with the underrated neo-noir gem The Lookout. Frank made a name for himself as one of Hollywood’s go-to script doctors, having performed uncredited rewrites on classics such as Saving Private Ryan and Gravity. He rose to prominence as one of the writers on Logan, for which he received an Oscar nod, and as the creator of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, which remains one of the streamer’s most-watched shows ever. Frank has also created the under-appreciated Western series Godless, and the noir drama Monsieur Spade.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
His film with Neeson is titled A Walk Among the Tombstones. Based on a 1992 novel written by Lawrence Block featuring his recurring character Matthew Scudder, the movie was ahead of the curve, with ***Reacher ***and ***Jack Ryan ***poised to become major streaming hits only a few years later. A Walk Among the Tombstones grossed more than $60 million worldwide against a reported budget of under $30 million. It holds a 68% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “A Walk Among the Tombstones doesn’t entirely transcend its genre clichés, but it does offer Liam Neeson one of his more compelling roles in recent memory, and that’s often enough.” More recently, Neeson starred as the famous gumshoe Philip Marlowe in a period noir movie directed by Neil Jordan. You can watch *A Walk Among the Tombstones *on Prime Video from June 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.