The Forgotten Russell Crowe Movie People Are Loving On Netflix

Russell Crowe is an Australian-born actor who took the world by storm in hits like L.A. Confidential, A Beautiful Mind, and Gladiator (via IMDb). In fact, odds are that most people can name at least one Russell Crowe movie when asked. But there's a fairly unknown movie of his that is burning up Netflix right now, and for good reason.

Crowe made The Next Three Days back in 2010, and the movie boasts an incredible cast and crew (via IMDb). Olivia Wilde, Elizabeth Banks, and Liam Neeson star alongside Crowe in the action-packed thriller, which is directed by Paul Haggis (who also directed Crash and Million Dollar Baby).

Haggis told Script that he based Crowe's character, John Brennan, on himself.

"I just sat down and said, 'If I had to break the woman I love out of prison, how would I do it?' I'd go on the Internet, that's the first thing I do. I'd Google 'How to break out of prison' [...] and found these fascinating things, and I just used them. I figured that's what he would do."

Critics gave the movie mixed reviews after its release. Celebrated film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars. "The Next Three Days is not a bad movie. It's sort of slow, because it spells out a lot of details, but it kept me involved. It's just that, after it was over, I felt it was a waste of the talent involved. I'd like to see Crowe and Banks in a smart Haggis original that wasn't about a jailbreak. I'm not sure, unfortunately, that the people financing the film would agree with me."

Cinema Blend also spoke to the cast about the film, and asked Russell where he found inspiration for the role.

"It was one of the things that really attracted me to the character that unshakeable belief that we were talking about before. I was away from my own family for 87 days in order to make this film. So there was a big distance between me and my own family so that made a lot of the things we were doing in the script come into a very stark reality or a stark light. A lot of the time, and I know this simple, but I take the inspiration that I need for what I'm doing from the thing that I'm doing. It's a really well written script."