Mark Vanselow has been working as Liam Neeson’s stuntman for over 20 years and at least as many movies, dating all the way back to an uncredited role in the 2000 film Gun Shy. He’s helped Neeson look like a tough-as-nails badass in the Taken movies, the Ice Road films, The Commuter, and Cold Pursuit, to name just a few. But for Neeson’s latest, Vanselow is taking on his biggest challenge yet: directing.
The Mongoose stars Neeson as Ryan “Fang” Flanagan, a military veteran who gets caught up in a high-speed, cross-country chase after inadvertently stealing an expensive, high-tech car. Pursued by countless cops, helicopters, and one very angry Michael Chiklis as a Texas lawman with an axe to grind, Fang races toward the southern border, while his story makes national headlines and inspires a wave of supporters who help him outsmart the cops. It’s a modern folk-hero legend with plenty of everything you’d expect from Neeson: non-stop action, wild stunts, and lots of gruff dialogue.
For Polygon’s Fall Preview, we checked in with Vanselow to discuss navigating the stuntman-to-director pipeline, his approach to the action in The Mongoose, and the deeper meaning behind the movie.
1
How did you go from Liam Neeson’s stuntman to his director?
“In the stunt world you kind of move up the ladder to stunt coordinating and then second unit directing, where you’re directing a lot of the action,” Vanselow says. “I’ve been doing that for a number of years. And in the position of stunt coordinator or stunt performer, I’ve worked with some amazing directors throughout my career. So it was like a constant university every day.”
His opportunity to direct finally came with The Mongoose, thanks to the support of producers Bart Rosenblatt and Al Corley. Of course, it helped that the star of the film had his back, too.
“Liam was behind it 100%.”
2
How did you approach the stunts in The Mongoose?
Vanselow and Neeson have been working together for a long time, and they applied a lot of the same techniques honed over the years to The Mongoose. That includes an emphasis on close-combat action where the actor often does his own stunts.
“We’re always trying to create action that he can do as much as possible,” Vanselow says. “Obviously, there’s time constraints and issues of ability and safety, but Liam really endeavors to do as much as he possibly can, particularly when we’re talking about the fight action.”
“In the past, we’ve created stuff that he and I do together. This time, I stepped aside and let some other people do it.”
Beyond Neeson, the most important character in the movie is arguably his car, a high-tech vehicle with a built-in AI assistant that he steals early in the story, kicking off a cross-country chase. That also means plenty of explosive driving stunts.
“The car is a character in the movie,” Vanselow says, “and it represents a lot of different things. It was a great challenge and I got to work with a really great team. Chris Weir was the stunt coordinator and his team did an amazing job with the resources we had.”
3
How The Mongoose handles the topic of PTSD in military veterans
For a lighthearted action thriller, The Mongoose tackles some heavier topics, specifically the way America treats its military veterans. Fang is an ex-soldier still dealing with his own trauma, and as the chase makes national news, he becomes a sort of folk hero, especially to other veterans who go out of their way to help him evade the police.
For Vanselow, this was crucial to making The Mongoose more than just another mindless action thriller.
“It’s an action movie, but there’s a lot of depth to it,” he says. “Hopefully it’s one of those movies where you can go back and see it again and again, and keep finding other layers. It’s not just a shiny car racing around the corner.”
The Mongoose releases in theaters on Oct. 30.