
At what point do you stop giving a director chances? Any film director can have a slump and recover from it — M. Night Shyamalan made The Last Airbender, but he also made Trap. But at what point do you stop considering the past successes and only focus on the recent failures? Wherever you draw that line, Doug Liman’s latest The Instigators, his second film of 2024, is butting right up against it.