The Three Liam Neeson Movies On IMDb’s Top 250 List

If you grew up watching movies in the mid-2000s, chances are you think of Liam Neeson as some sort of perpetually grizzled action hero engaged in a never-ending quest for vengeance. It’s no secret that the Irish star has spent the latter part of his career fronting a series of middling actioners that, if you removed the names and flimsy plots, would basically all be the same film. (We’ve even ranked the 10 best “old man Liam Neeson action films” right here.)

It all began with 2008’s “Taken,” which began Neeson’s action star makeover and was actually a pretty good movie that set a precedent for similar films moving forward. But there was a time when Neeson was known for much more than being the permanently upset badass dad. Prior to 2008, the man had some seriously impressive accomplishments to his name, such as a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Holocaust drama “Schindler’s List.” He also received widespread acclaim for playing the titular Irish revolutionary in 1996’s “Michael Collins” and for his portrayal of American biologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey in 2004’s “Kinsey.”

The latter movie wasn’t the last of his standout performances, either. In 2005, he starred as villain Ra’s al Ghul in Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot “Batman Begins,” delivering a brilliant performance as Bruce Wayne’s mentor-turned-nemesis and reminding us all of his remarkable abilities. It was a role he reprised briefly in 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” but by then, Neeson had almost fully transitioned into the mode of handing out endless beatdowns in “Taken” clones.

As you might expect, none of Neeson’s latter-day action outings have made it into IMDb’s top 250 films, which isn’t to say they’re all awful. But it is a reminder that the man is a much more capable actor than the last 20-odd years of his filmography might suggest.

Liam Neeson has managed to crack IMDb’s list of the ten best movies of all time and has multiple other projects in the top 250. Robert De Niro is the actor with the most films in the IMDb Top 250, with a full nine projects falling within those hallowed rankings. But Neeson can still be proud to be able to claim three films that made the cut.

First up at number seven is “Schindler’s List.” It’s not surprising this is Neeson’s highest-rated film on the site, as it remains the only performance for which he received an Oscar nomination. But it’s also just one of those all-time great movies, winning seven Academy Awards overall. Neeson played German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who helped save more than a thousand Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Nearly every review of the film praised Neeson’s portrayal of the titular hero of the movie (simplified though his heroics were), with Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Inquirer commending “the triumph of Neeson’s portrait.”

As such, it makes sense to see “Schindler’s List” make it into the top 10, let alone the top 250, on IMDb. With a ranking of 9.0 based on 1.5 million ratings, the movie remains not only Spielberg’s masterpiece, but Neeson’s finest on-screen moment.

If “Schindler’s List” is sitting in its rightful position in the IMDb top 10, you might expect some of his other critically-acclaimed work to be somewhere close by. Interestingly enough, neither “Michael Collins” nor “Kinsey” are anywhere to be seen in the top 250. Instead, Neeson’s other two movies to make the list are “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Batman Begins” in the 71st and 130th positions respectively.

This is where the IMDb rankings betray their faults. This is a list compiled by people who not only use IMDb but make a point of actually rating the films they watch — most of whom are younger individuals who likely grew up on the internet. There’s no doubt that “Batman Begins” is a great movie, though I’m not sure if everybody would agree that it belongs in the top 250 movies of all time. It’s certainly one of this writer’s favorite films, however, and its score of 8.2 based on 1.6 million ratings is testament to its quality as a film in general and not just a Batman movie.

But “The Dark Knight Rises?” Sure, it’s one of the most ambitious superhero movies ever made, but this is the most controversial of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. There’s no doubt the war epic take on a Batman story was an impressive achievement, but its flaws are well-known and its standing at 71 overall on the IMDb list remains dubious at best (though with a score of 8.4 based on 1.9 million ratings, I guess it’s hard to argue with the IMDb consensus).

Still, if we’re talking Neeson, I think both movies feature the man at the top of his game, and that includes “The Dark Knight Rises.” Though he was fully immersed in grizzled badassery by 2012, he clearly hadn’t lost a step, delivering a measured yet intense performance in his brief cameo wherein he visits a broken Bruce Wayne held in captivity. Emerging from the shadows, just as he did in “Batman Begins,” Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul is just as menacingly refined in the threequel as he was in “Begins,” and provided a brief glimpse at the man we all knew and loved before his “Taken” era subsumed him.