A Pierce Brosnan Movie Flop Is Making A Surprising Comeback On Netflix

What do you get when you combine Pierce Brosnan, Nick Cannon, and some people called Jamie Chung, Hermione Corfield, Rockmond Dunbar, Rami Jaber, and Mike Angelo? A massive flop, apparently. In a way, it's a shame "The Misfits" bombed back in 2021. The film made a meager $1.5 million on a reported budget of $15 million, but despite the abject box office and even worse reviews, it was at least propelled by decent enough intentions.

Director Renny Harlin, who's also overseeing the upcoming "Strangers" trilogy series, grew up in Finland loving Hollywood action movies and thrillers, and managed to accomplish the impossible by breaking into the U.S. film market and establishing himself as a big name director. Films such as "Die Hard 2," "Cliffhanger," and "The Long Kiss Goodnight" helped cement his standing, but he also proved he had a penchant for horror by directing movies like "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master," and "Deep Blue Sea."

With "The Misfits," the Finnish filmmaker attempted to return to the glory days of the '90s some 21 years after the end of that golden decade. As Harlin told /Film:

"I miss those movies, myself. All the big movies nowadays have so much digital work in them. Even digital doubles, digital people created to do some of the stunts. The audience can feel it. It's not a matter of being involved in the same way. Now, it's who can do the most insane things digitally? Instead of, you know, real stunts and real people risking their lives doing these real things. I miss those days."

Unfortunately, none of this proved that audiences were hungry for more realistic, CGI-eschewing action — at least, not when "The Misfits" first arrived because once again, it's Netflix to the rescue of this box office bomb.

In "The Misfits," Pierce Brosnan plays career criminal Richard Pace, who joins a group of thieves to pull off a gold heist in Abu Dhabi. Tim Roth is also there. But don't let that 17% Rotten Tomatoes score fool you. The movie is a lot worse than that. Which only goes to show that if you stick a film in the Netflix "Recently Added" category, or give it a prominent place on the home screen, we'll happily lap it up regardless of whether it's decent or not.

At the time of writing, "The Misfits" is sitting at number three on the most-watched films list for the U.S. (as per streaming data aggregator FlixPatrol). Since hitting the streamer on October 14, 2023, the film has risen from eighth place as of October 16 to its current position where it's threatening to take the Gold by the end of the week. It's also sitting in the third spot in Palau and the Marshall Islands, for some reason.

In the same week that Scott Derrickson's 2014 effort "Deliver Us from Evil" made an impressive run up the Netflix charts, "The Misfits" is proving to be yet another surprise hit on the platform, which is becoming renowned for giving new life to previously overlooked or maligned films. Often, that's a great thing — like when 2012's "Dredd" got some much needed shine. In the case of "The Misfits," however, it's a deflating reminder that Netflix users will pretty much watch anything.

Far be it from me to revel in a film's failure, but in an age where we're constantly bombarded with "content," I think we're entitled to push back against the tide from time to time. With "The Misfits," Renny Harlin isn't entirely to blame because the Emirati-funded movie often does, as critic Chris Bumbray wrote in his review, feel like "ad for Abu Dhabi tourism." That wasn't the worst critics had to say about this film, either. Stuff New Zealand dubbed it "a desert-set 'Ocean's 11' knock-off, presumably made for an audience of the very young, drunk or recently concussed." Yikes.

All of which raises the question of why "The Misfits" is doing so well on Netflix. Unfortunately, there really doesn't seem to be any explanation beyond "it's new to the service." That's a bit of a shame, really, because Renny Harlin is probably right that we need less CGI and more actual, y'know, movies. But if shooting action as realistically as possible was enough to guarantee success, "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" would have made a lot more than $566 million worldwide — which, either way you slice it, was disappointing for a film that cost almost $300 million to make and was supposed to astound audiences with Tom Cruise's commitment to doing his own, extremely dangerous stunts.

With "The Misfits," Harlin's dedication to shooting as much in-camera as he could didn't make up for what critics overwhelmingly decided was a derivative and uninspired actioner. Let's hope the director's return to shark movies with "Deep Water" makes up for it. And in the meantime, he can at least rest easy in the knowledge that, for a few days, the streaming audiences witnessed the majesty of what Paste magazine called, "The feature film adaptation of a stock photo."