Roger Ebert’s Excessive Reward for Liam Neeson’s Rob Roy Struggle Scene

In Roger Ebert’s eyes, one in every of Liam Neeson’s films – Rob Roy – sports activities among the best motion sequences ever put to display screen. Because of films like Taken and so many others launched within the 2010s and 2020s, Liam Neeson has developed a popularity as among the best motion stars of this period.

However whereas it was Taken that kicked off this explicit part in Liam Neeson’s film profession, the actor already had a bent for action-oriented roles, albeit in genres completely different from the forms of films he is made lately. Liam Neeson has been saving the world and combating dangerous guys in all types of various genres, from sci-fi to fantasy.

One among his many struggle scenes got here in a movie that was much less of an motion movie and extra of a historic biopic. In 1995, Liam Neeson performed the starring position in Rob Roy, which features a sequence that acquired vital reward from Roger Ebert, one of the well-respected film critics.

Roger Ebert Believes Rob Roy Has One Of The Finest Struggle Scenes Ever

Set in 18th-century Scotland, the 1995 interval piece noticed Liam Neeson step into the position of Rob Roy McGregor, a Scottish people hero concerned within the struggle towards the British invaders. On the finish of Rob Roy, Rob Roy will get right into a duel with Cunningham, with each characters getting to decide on their weapons for the battle, which lasts about six minutes and ends with Rob Roy rising victorious.

Discussing the struggle in his overview, Ebert known as it “among the best of its kind ever executed.” He contrasted it to different film sword fights that decision for the combatants to “leap about effortlessly, their blades shimmering and clashing,” explaining how in Rob Roy, you will get “the sense of the lethal stakes, and the good bodily effort concerned.”

Ebert went on to speak about how the weapon decisions even “mirrored the personalities” of the characters, and mentioned how the pauses and thought made the struggle mirror a ‘”chess match.” To Ebert, it is “one of many nice motion sequences in film historical past.”

Rob Roy’s Massive Battle Is not Liam Neeson’s Solely Unimaginable Sword-Combating Scene

Curiously, Rob Roy’s duel between its titular character and Cunningham is not the one all-time nice sword battle in Liam Neeson’s profession. One other stems from the ending of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the place Neeson’s Qui Gon Gin and Obi-Wan Kenobi get in a heated, two-on-one showdown with Darth Maul.

The Phantom Menace might not be perceived as being on the decrease finish of the Star Wars spectrum, but it surely does have some optimistic components, not the least of which being the edge-of-your-seat, back-and-forth lightsaber duel. It is the spotlight of the film, and arguably Liam Neeson’s second-best sword struggle after Rob Roy.

Supply: RogerEbert.com