You may not know the name Jaume Collet-Serra, but the Barcelona-born filmmaker has become, without question, one of our great living B-movie auteurs. From the lurid shocks of “Orphan” to the woman-vs.-shark tension of “The Shallows,” Collet-Serra is a genre master, placing relatable characters into larger-than-life scenarios for maximum impact.
He’s also the unsung architect of Liam Neeson’s post-“Taken” career as an action superstar. While the sequels to Luc Besson’s 2008 hit were an exercise in diminishing returns, Neeson’s collaborations with Collet-Serra — “Run All Night,” “Unknown” and my personal favorite, “Non-Stop,” in which air marshal Neeson has to find the terrorist on a packed international flight — have been lean-and-mean action-movie standouts in an industry that often seems to have forgotten how to portray thrills and mayhem without burying everything in over-the-top CG effects.