Liam Neeson Has 'Unretired' From Action Films

A dark chill spread out from the north over Lake Ontario two weeks ago, as actor Liam Neeson stood before God, and man, and the Toronto International Film Festival to announce that he was retiring from action movies. 

Daughters were kidnapped. Garments were rent. Two packed screenings at the festival were overtaken by wild wolves, and there were no survivors.

Or at least, that's how the press portrayed the remarks in widespread coverage following the festival day. Who could blame a writer or three for wanting to put pen to paper and pour a little out for "old-man-action" pioneer Liam Neeson as he put his skills to rest at last?

Fortunately, Neeson has returned today to clarify, with another tossed-off comment to a room full of reporters, that he has not retired from making action movies, and will in fact "be doing action movies until they bury me in the ground." 

Neeson made the clarifying remarks at the red carpet premiere for his newest movie, the true-story political thriller Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.

Responding to a reporter asking about the actor's genre-selective retirement, Neeson laughed and said "It's not true, look at me! You're talking in the past tense!" He then confirmed he would continue doing action movies to the end of his days.

It's worth noting that the original rumor sprung from remarks Neeson made about how he feared the audience would get sick of him doing roles in action movies as he aged, and clearly did not refer to his own feelings on the topic. So, you hear that, audience? You're the ones in charge of Liam Neeson's fate, now. And you have a very specific set of skills: buying tickets to movies like Taken Four. And Taken Zero. And American Wolf Warrior: The Grey Two.

We'll be there, at least. 

For more on Neeson's most current projects, you can catch the first trailer for Mark Felt here. After that, you can watch the phone speech from Taken here. 

Neeson may be awesome, but is he good enough to make it into our list of the 25 best action movies ever? There's only one way to find out.