Mel Gibson‘s days as an A-list megastar are long behind him, with a series of well-publicized issues in his personal life taking a serious toll on his standing in the industry, but the 65 year-old has undergone something of a reinvention by lending his world-weary gravitas to a series of B-level action thrillers, and you can’t deny that there are few names who can play a grizzled badass better than the Lethal Weapon star.
His new career path has seen him escape from a Mexican prison in Get the Gringo, show up for an extended villainous cameo in Machete Kills, battle Sylvester Stallone as the big bad of The Expendables 3, headline the severely underrated and massively entertaining Blood Father, team up with Vince Vaughn in hard-boiled noir tale Dragged Across Concrete, play a very different kind of Santa Claus in Fatman and smoke cigars while Frank Grillo remains stuck in a time loop in Hulu’s recent hit Boss Level.
However, it’s one of Gibson’s weaker modern efforts that’s been dominating Netflix today, with Force of Nature currently the sixth most-watched title in the content library on the global chart. The actor plays a retired cop who teams up with Emile Hirsch’s active duty officer to battle against a gang of thieves searching for $55 million inside an apartment building as a hurricane rages outside.
It’s far from original and hugely derivative, but Gibson enjoys putting on a thick Noo Yawk accent for unknown reasons and comfortably steals every scene he’s in. Force of Nature was originally released on VOD last summer to little fanfare, but as a mid-budget action thriller, it was always guaranteed to play well on Netflix, as the genre is wont to do on an almost daily basis.
Published: Apr 2, 2021 12:28 pm