Netflix Is Breathing New Life Into A Forgotten Action Movie

Director Renny Harlin's career is fascinating. The Finnish filmmaker grew up loving Hollywood movies and later managed to insert himself into that very industry, making a slew of successful '80s and '90s movies from "The Long Kiss Goodnight" to "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master." More recently, however, his output has been a little more uneven.

Last year, Harlin's Pierce Brosnan-starring film "The Misfits" made a surprise comeback on Netflix. I say a "surprise" because "The Misfits" did not fare well at the box office when it was first released in 2021, and despite Harlin's efforts to rekindle the magic of his '90s actioners, simply functioned, according to critic Chris Bumbray, as "ad for Abu Dhabi tourism." Thankfully, the man who gave us such classics as "Die Hard 2" and "Cliffhanger" has not simply been reduced to churning out streaming movies that desperately try to rehash a bygone era of action filmmaking. The "Deep Blue Sea" director is now overseeing the new "Strangers" movies, the first of which, titled "The Strangers: Chapter 1," was recently highlighted at CinemaCon 2024.

But that doesn't mean he hasn't found time to squeeze in yet another middling action entry with the Aaron Eckhart-led "The Bricklayer." This little-known thriller, currently sporting a devastatingly average 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, didn't exactly wow audiences when it was released earlier this year, but Netflix seems to have stepped in to rescue yet another Renny Harlin film from complete obscurity, with "The Bricklayer" currently proving a hit on the streamer.

"The Bricklayer" stars Aaron Eckhart in the title role of an ex-CIA agent who just wants to spend his retirement, er laying bricks apparently. He is, of course, forced out of his laborer life by his former agency in order to help track down an insurgent who's assassinating international journalists. An adaptation of Paul Lindsay's 2010 novel of the same name, the film also stars Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Ilfenesh Hadera, and Clifton Collins Jr., and seems to have been enough to keep some critics entertained, even if many criticized the film for cliché action tropes and dodgy plotting.

None of which, it seems, has put off the Netflix crowd, who have propelled "The Bricklayer" to the heights of the Netflix Top 10 (though, as always, it should be noted that this entire chart was basically invented to distract from the streamer's dodgy viewing metrics). At the time of writing, the movie is the number four most popular film on Netflix U.S., but that's not the full story. According to streaming data aggregator FlixPatrol, "The Bricklayer" hit number two on Netflix U.S. on April 12, 2024. That's the day after it hit the service, which is an impressively swift climb up the charts. The movie stayed in the number two spot until April 17, 2024, when it dropped to fourth place, which means it had a solid five-day run near the top but just missed out on the top spot. Considering Kevin Hart's "Lift" was able to completely dominate the Netflix charts back in January, though, it wouldn't be the most prestigious accolade for "The Bricklayer" to make it to number one.

For now, then, I'm sure Renny Harlin is grateful for Netflix giving yet another of his quickly-forgotten films a new life.