When did Liam Neeson get awesome?

Schindler's List was almost 20 years ago.
That's when most of us first saw Liam Neeson in his Oscar nominated role as Oskar Schindler. His acting career began more than 20 years prior and he's been working nearly nonstop the entire time (Neeson's impressive IMDB page).

photo via a Liam Neeson Photoshop Challenge on uproxx.com

Lately, he's been one of the best Hollywood kicking ass badasses. Some may have realized how awesome he is when he was wielding a light saber, or beginning Batman, but for me it was his throat-punching tour de force Taken. It was quickly followed up by a similar role in Unknown and yesterday The Gray opened in theaters.  [I really wish "the" would've been dropped from the title - I wanted the starkly titled single word trilogy to have been completed].

Just when I thought my opinion of Liam Neeson couldn't have gotten any better, I saw the below embedded video. In my mind, he's a triple threat - with the ability to make others cry from an emotional monologue, cry from a painful beating, and now cry in laughter.