It's very strange. He had a really solid run from 1990 to 1999. Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Deep Blue Sea was all well-made, enjoyable action films. Even Cutthroat Island is not as bad as many say it is.
After DBS though, it's like his knowledge of how to make a good film just progressively evaporated. To be fair, I haven't seen everything he made during this time period. Mindhunters, for instance, I've heard some people say is good. But I did see Driven and Exorcist: The Beginning, and neither were particularly good, and certainly both weren't anywhere near as good as his earlier films. By the time he got to The Legend of Hercules, it had just all gone to shit for him. That was legit one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Before rendering any kind of final verdict, I should make more of a point to see the rest of his filmography. But it's clear from what I have seen that something changed for him right around the year 2000.
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TMC-4 (20122)
3 years ago
I read a theory in the Die Hard 2 forums about why Renny Harlin's status as a reliable A-list director began to sink right after the financial failure that was Cutthroat Island:
https://moviechat.org/tt0099423/Die-Hard-2/5ecb08e24836122f65dff7f3/Incredible-sequel
Renny Harlin was a very successful director by the time he had turned 30. I like Die Hard 2 more than I like DH1/DH3/DH4. He was very talented and his directing style was fresh & crisp. Not many directors his age have managed this level of success.
It was not until his run-ins with Carolco Pictures and the vindictive Andrew G. Vajna that his career had its first huge blow.
Andrew G. Vajna basically managed to get Renny Harlin canceled. Blaming him for sinking Vajna life work, Carolco Pictures.
This devastated Renny Harlin career. He did not work for 4-5 years after this.
When he returned he had changes his directing style trying to copy Michael Bays visual style. Driven was another failure. So have basically every project he has been in involved with since. He now have to travel to Asia in order to get work.
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PrimeMinisterX (8707)
3 years ago
That's interesting. There's certainly no doubt that the failure of Cutthroat Island damaged his career, and not just his career but also his then-wife's Geena Davis. But he went on to make The Long Kiss Goodnight just a year later. TLKG is a fucking great film but it failed at the box office. He then made Deep Blue Sea, which did pretty well, but followed it up with another failure in Driven.
After that it seemed that he slowly forgot how to make movies. I watched The Legend of Hercules just a little while back and it was LAUGHABLY bad. It's shocking to think that the guy who made Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight made that piece of shit. I'm not even sure how it's possible.
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