Liam Neeson and the Shelby Super Snake Teased in The Mongoose Trailer

Liam Neeson has spent years playing men who track others down. In his latest film, the roles reverse. He becomes the one everyone is after, and the machine he chooses for the job is a serious piece of American muscle.

In The Mongoose, Neeson plays Ryan ‘Fang’ Flanagan, a seasoned Gulf War combat veteran and former prisoner of war. Things get nasty when he gets involved in his ex-wife’s affairs and is charged with murder. He’d have been better off just handing himself over, but the prospect of another spell in captivity doesn’t appeal to him much. So, like any self-respecting bandit, he helps himself to a car that does not belong to him and points it in the direction of the open road. What follows is a wild, high-speed chase on live television, as Flanagan’s old Special Forces buddies try to help and the general public cheers him on, fingers crossed that this guy in the bright red Mustang will stay one step ahead of the law.


That Mustang is a 2025 Ford Mustang Shelby Super Snake in Race Red. It was taken from Flanagan’s ex-wife’s new partner’s garage, which was a very bad decision to say the least. This car would be a beast on its own as a stock S650 Mustang GT, but the Shelby crew has taken it a step further by bolting a 3.0-liter Whipple supercharger to the 5.0-liter Coyote V8. The end result is a car that can hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, run the quarter-mile in the mid 10-second range and a little more than 135 mph, and still top out at a respectable 180 mph, and yes, those numbers do matter when you’re trying to stay one step ahead of the cops for hundreds of miles.


Shelby has thrown the works at the Super Snake, beginning with a cooling system capable of handling the continuous load of a supercharged engine and ending with a Borla exhaust that allows the V8 to breathe and grow rowdy. They’ve also included some substantial performance upgrades, such as half-shafts, a stiffer chassis, and a unique suspension package, to ensure that all that power is effectively transferred to the road. Buyers can choose between a 6-speed manual and a 10-speed automatic transmission, though the film’s teaser teases the manual in action, replete with a clever short-throw shifter. To top it all off, you get some finely forged wheels and grippy performance tires, giving the car a look that’s difficult to miss, even with a posse of patrol cars on your tail.


Mark Vanselow has basically been all up in Liam Neeson’s physical presence for years, since he’s been the actor’s stunt double on over 20 projects, including the Taken series and both Ice Road films. The Mongoose, on the other hand, is his feature film directorial debut, and you get the idea he knows a thing or two about staging an entertaining chase scene. Years of research into how to make a pursuit appear genuine have given him a strong sense of it.


The Mongoose was filmed in Victoria, Australia, with local highways and towns filling in for Kentucky, Arkansas, and the Texas Gulf Coast. To be fair, the production utilized the state’s locations and tax benefits to help keep expenses down. The plot, however, is firmly rooted in the American South. The film is slated to be released in US theaters on October 30th, 2026, and at this time, people are still enjoying old-fashioned, high-stakes chase flicks with characters that drive the plot. Liam Neeson plays Flanagan, a man who has already been apprehended and is determined not to be caught again. The Shelby Super Snake allows him to experience that desperation on the big screen.