Where was The Mongoose filmed? Liam Neeson's all-American car chase never touched an American road

The Mongoose opens in U.S. theaters on October 30 through Samuel Goldwyn Films. Neeson plays Ryan "Fang" Flanagan, a war hero accused of a crime he didn't commit, who leads police on a televised chase from Kentucky toward the American Southwest, helped by men from his old Special Forces battalion. Marisa Tomei plays his ex-wife, Ving Rhames his right-hand man, and Michael Chiklis the reckless head of the Texas Highway Patrol.

It's the first feature directed by Mark Vanselow, Neeson's longtime stunt double, who was twice nominated for the Screen Actors Guild's stunt ensemble award, for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Thompson Evans wrote it.

Where it was filmed

In Australia. The Mongoose shot for about eight weeks in early 2025 in Victoria, the state around Melbourne, and none of its reported locations is in the United States. According to VicScreen, the state's screen agency, Victoria stood in for Kentucky, Arkansas and the Gulf of Mexico coast of Texas.

The production was based at the Melbourne Screen Hub in Footscray and filmed across the city and the countryside:

• Castlemaine — the old gold-rush town hosted the shoot from February 17 to 25, 2025, on Lyttleton, Templeton, Frederick and Hargraves Streets downtown, on Kennedy Street near the Midland Hotel and around the Ampol gas station on Johnstone Street.
• The Calder Freeway — the stretch between Malmsbury and Harcourt, north of Melbourne.
• Bacchus Marsh — the town's aerodrome was used for a helicopter sequence.
• Melbourne and its suburbs — the CBD, North Melbourne, Kensington, Moorabbin, Altona, Bangholme, Templestowe, Frankston and Travancore, plus Little River on the way to Geelong.

The head of the Texas Highway Patrol spends this movie chasing Liam Neeson through rural Victoria.

Why Victoria

Money and familiarity. The shoot was backed by VicScreen's Victorian Screen Rebate and by the Australian government's 30% Location Offset for international productions. VicScreen says the film employed 453 local screen workers, used 150 local businesses and brought more than A$19 million into the state's economy, about A$2 million of it in regional towns.

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Neeson knew the place. The Mongoose is his third film in Victoria in four years, after Blacklight and Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky, and its producers at Code Entertainment also made the Ice Road films.

"I'm honoured to be back in Victoria working on my latest film The Mongoose," Neeson said.

VicScreen's chief executive, Caroline Pitcher, said "the strengths of Victoria's screen industry are no secret to Liam Neeson."

For one day, February 18, 2025, the Calder Freeway between Malmsbury and Harcourt was closed from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. for the shoot, and local drivers were sent the long way around, on the Old Calder Highway.

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