A car chase gets much of its force from the distance between a driver’s intention and the space available to carry it out. The Mongoose has an experienced eye for that distance. Director Mark Vanselow, a longtime stunt professional, has a premise that lets him put it to regular use. Liam Neeson’s Ryan “Fang” Flanagan is a veteran on the run after killing his ex-wife’s fiancé in what he claims was self-defense. Once he is in motion, the film can tell us a good deal about his position through who can still see him and what he has left to drive through.
Neeson brings an economy to the part that suits the job of staying ahead. Flanagan can sound as if he has already considered the possibilities somebody else is now finding time to explain. That is satisfying when a performer has a genuine reason to get a step ahead of the script. Over the length of a chase, the character needs comparable opportunities to be wrong. A change in terrain or in the availability of an ally can make him discover a limit the audience has had time to suspect. The screenplay relies on his accumulated competence more often than it tests the way he acquired it.
The red Mustang is as good a casting choice as anybody in the film. It has the immediate recognizability a televised pursuit requires, along with the disadvantage of being an impossible thing to drive inconspicuously. Both qualities could matter to a fugitive. The broadcasts keep recognizing the object even when the driver has reasons to change how the story is being told. Vanselow can put the car into an intelligible relationship with the surrounding traffic without pausing the action to celebrate it. The stunt work is strongest when an obstacle makes its size and momentum momentarily unhelpful.
There is a potentially rich argument in the fact that the pursuit is televised. A person watching from a distance can begin rooting for a fugitive before knowing anything reliable about him. The same pursuit that limits Flanagan’s options supplies an audience with an unusually simple thing to follow. A film that took that discrepancy seriously could make his public admirers a volatile resource. Here the crowd’s fascination mostly confirms the satisfaction the film already expects from its audience. That leaves the broadcasts with fewer dramatic uses than their prominence suggests.
The veterans who help Flanagan give the picture some welcome pauses in which a relationship exists before it has to provide a solution. Ving Rhames has the authority to make an old association carry its own obligations. Michael Chiklis has the bluntness the pursuit needs on the other side. The film rarely lets the intervening spaces become as consequential as the next attempt to close them. An ally becomes most visible when the story needs a fresh option. An officer has to make the new option difficult. The machinery is serviceable and tends to leave the people inside it at the level of a function.
Marisa Tomei’s position as Flanagan’s ex-wife might have made the difference between the public figure on the road and the man a family remembers considerably sharper. She has a personal reason to understand how he got into the situation and a life that will continue to bear the consequences after the pursuit has ended. That is a different stake from the satisfaction of seeing him evade the next roadblock. The premise leaves room for two people to disagree about how well the chase serves either of them. In a movie devoted to its forward motion, the person who has to wait is in a comparatively unrewarding role.
The physical work is worth attending to. A vehicle has mass and a line of travel, and Vanselow can make a spectator aware of both. That clarity is a pleasure because the point of a maneuver can register before anybody comments on it. The film would be sharper if the political and personal circumstances could be understood with the same precision. An audience may believe Flanagan has an opening and still wonder why he would choose it, or who will have to pay for it. Too much of the movie answers those questions in advance by putting the right man behind the wheel.
