A handful of bloody deaths and a few moments of rapid-fire cursing add insult to injury in this creatively bankrupt slog of a thriller. Aside from a nice (but entirely mishandled) message about the bond between war veterans, the time spent watching The Mongoose would fly by quicker waiting at the DMV.
Ryan “Fang” Flanagan has been captured before. He’ll die before becoming anyone’s prisoner again.
Fang has lived through trauma few people other than his fellow veterans would even begin to understand. After being captured behind enemy lines, he was forced to stand by helplessly and watch as a solider under his command died from his injuries after (presumably) being tortured. The last place Fang will be is in a cage.
This understandably strong aversion to capture of any sort has put Fang in a predicament, as he’s currently driving a stolen car in a high-speed police chase, toting a murder weapon that killed a supposedly innocent man.
Only Fang knows what really happened. But the situation doesn’t look good from a law enforcement perspective: an unstable man who’s seen more evil in this world than most people could handle, now fleeing the scene of a murdered man—the same man who had relations with Fang’s ex-wife, Tara.
But in order to explain his side of the story, Fang would need to be brought in. Cuffed. Contained. Caged.
Fans of Liam Neeson’s other actioners know—he’s typically not a man who will go down without a fight. And why take the time to exonerate yourself anyway, when instead, you can aimlessly drive double the speed limit, dodging police cars and nearly slamming into the vehicles of unassuming civilians?
After finding out that his ex-wife, Tara, was hurt by an abusive partner, Fang momentarily comforts her, holding her and offering to pick up her things from that partner’s place for her.
There’s an endearing message about friendship and loyalty between veterans—unfortunately, it quickly becomes muddled by efforts to enable Fang to keep running from the police.
Quoting a poem to his lover, Fang says, “if God choose, I shall love thee better after death.” When asked by law enforcement what his motives are, Fang responds that he dreams of “racial harmony and religious accord.” Later in the conversation, he dodges continued questioning by claiming everyone is “acting in defense from an evolutionary standpoint.”
We see a flashback of a vacation that Fang and Tara shared together before they separated. The camera briefly closes in on her back and swimsuit-covered backside, with Fang’s arms around her. While reminiscing about this trip with Tara, Fang makes an explicit comment about the sexual activity they were up to during that trip.
Further innuendos are sprinkled throughout the film, such as the insinuation that Texans get sexually aroused by big guns. A man insults another man by calling him “inbred.”
Fang kisses his ex-wife on the forehead. A group of men joke about the amount of “busted marriages” they share between the three of them, with one man having been divorced three times, another two times, and the final man just once.
A handful of war flashbacks provide the most explicitly violent scenes, as a few skirmishes involve gunshots to the head and chest accompanied by splattering blood. Fang dodges gunfire and grenades that presumably take the lives of his less nimble enemies. A character grabs a venomous snake and swings it into the neck of an enemy. A bruised and bloodied man was presumably the subject of torture for information and eventually dies of his injuries.
A scuffle between two men, with one man holding a gun, ends in one man’s death after both individuals stumble over a tall railing. While one man’s injuries are minor, the other man lies in a pool of blood—somehow accidentally shooting himself in the chest as he fell. Elsewhere, another man gets shot in the leg, leaving a blood-soaked injury.
While we never see anyone clearly die during the ongoing car chase, police cars do swerve and crash into each other, sometimes flipping over or slamming into buildings. Fang’s vehicle sustains some heavy damage as well. On multiple occasions, he speeds up in populated streets, apparently assuming the civilians will hop out of his way in time.
A woman is hospitalized after her abusive partner hits her. (She has a painful-looking gash on her head.) A news anchor reports that a police chief has been under investigation three separate times for excessive force. A missile takes down a helicopter, but all of the passengers survive.
With the constant revving of engines, it’s surprising that so many harsh profanities can still be heard throughout the film. Around 5 f-words are clearly spoken, along with 10 s-words. Viewers also catch wind of a single use of “b–ch,” five uses of both “a–” and “h—,” two uses of “pr–k” and a use of “b–tard.” There’s also a misuse of Jesus’ name, as well as four misuses of God’s name—all of which are paired with “d–n.”
The camera catches a couple of flipped middle fingers, which are later blurred and thrown into a news report.
A war veteran is accused of “popping Xanax and Valium like candy.” Adults drink beer, wine and hard liquor in a few different bar scenes. A man quips that he is “craving an authentic margarita.”
As the film progresses and Fang’s high-speed getaway from the police becomes national news, we see groups of veterans supporting his actions—either by helping him repaint his vehicle to temporarily avoid detection or by warning him of upcoming police barricades. (In a couple cases, these people wait on the side of the road with signs cheering him on, somehow having more foresight of his next move before the blundering police do.)
The film seems to portray that, at this point, the public has been told that Fang murdered his ex-wife’s lover and is now fleeing police in the man’s stolen car while touting the murder weapon. Therefore, the public should have no reason to assume this might not be the full story. And while the theme of veterans supporting each other is a nice and engaging concept, the film’s portrayal makes it seem like these heroes are willing to support one of their own above the law.
As an avid film fan, I often find myself leaving the theater ruminating over the images I just witnessed dancing across the screen. Some movies don’t fully click until the car ride home—fewer take a rewatch or two to fully reveal what was always hiding just under the surface, a thematic reward for those willing to look hard enough.
Other times, the only questions to solve post-film are: “How did that get made?” or “How badly did that actor need a paycheck?”
For The Mongoose specifically, I might add, “Why did this whole film feel like an excuse to drive a cool car really fast, with direction and editing so poorly executed that the likely impressive stunt driving is buried?”
The answer quickly became evident as I conducted a brief investigation into director Mark Vanselow’s career: While this film is his first theatrically released directional effort, Vanselow has had a long career as Liam Neeson’s stunt double.
While certainly not a viable movie-night option based off of its own artistic merits, the film takes itself so seriously that it doesn’t quite reach the “so bad, it’s good” territory either.
What viewers are left with are some harsh profanities, a handful of bizarre innuendos and a hollow shell of a film—a conduit for what could have been an investing car chase.
Unless you come from a family of Liam Neeson filmography completionists, it’s best to drive far away from The Mongoose.
Jonah Parker’s first interaction with Plugged In came when he was just five years old, after his parents read a review for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and deemed the content too intense for him. What started out as a contentious relationship between Jonah and a staff of reviewers who knew not of his existence would later turn into an appreciation for the site’s ability to present media content in a way that was accurate and fair. Jonah enjoys analyzing how our entertainment echoes the creativity of our Creator while finding glimpses of Biblical truths within every genre. He believes that Robert Pattinson’s Batmobile is the perfect mix of cool and practical.
