Robert De Niro's 2025 Action Thriller With Dismal 8% RT Score Becomes Instant Streaming Sensation After Quiet Theatrical Release

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Published Feb 3, 2026, 7:05 PM EST

Adam Bentz is a senior news writer at ScreenRant, where he has authored nearly 5,000 articles, including features and lists. He studied creative writing and English with a concentration in screenwriting at Southern New Hampshire University and interned as a writer/journalist for The Borgen Project, an influential organization that fights global poverty.

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After a quiet theatrical release last year, Tin Soldier has become an instant streaming sensation. Featuring a surprisingly star-studded cast led by Robert De Niro, among others, the crime thriller was filmed in 2022, but was not released until 2025, and was widely panned by critics.

Now, shortly after its streaming release on January 30, Tin Soldier ranks sixth on Hulu's Top 15 movies in the United States for today, February 3, where it has been for the past two days, ranking high as fourth, per FlixPatrol. It ranks below Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere at No. 1, Django Unchained, Safe House, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and The Help.

It ranks above Black Panther, The Princess and the Frog, The Mummy (1999), Code 3, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3, Cool Runnings, Superbad, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness at 15th.

Written and directed by Brad Furman, who co-wrote the script with Jess Fuerst and Pablo Fenjves, Tin Soldier follows a former soldier who, after the leader of a dangerous cult sparks a confrontation with authorities, returns to the compound he abandoned years earlier to confront his former mentor and hunt for his missing wife.

In addition to Robert De Niro, the film's surprisingly star-studded cast also includes Scott Eastwood, John Leguizamo, Nora Arnezeder, Jamie Foxx, Shamier Anderson, Yul Vazquez, Rita Ora, Saïd Taghmaoui, Alexa Feinstein, Eire Farrell, Xen Sams, and Laurence Mason.

Tin Soldier was panned by critics and audiences, resulting in atrocious 8% and 9% Rotten Tomatoes scores, respectively, with reviews calling it a baffling and incoherent mess that squanders its A-list cast. Its detractors say the story feels chopped together, tonally confused, emotionally hollow, and offers little suspense or payoff. Even self-confessed fans of bad movies found it exhausting, frustrating, and strangely misguided.

Tin Soldier had a minimal theatrical run, grossing approximately $89,572 worldwide against an estimated $45 million budget.

In some notable critical reviews, The Guardian's Leslie Felperin rated the film two out of five stars and wrote, "This action thriller is a mangled, dreary, unlovely mess and so much less than the sum of its parts." FandomWire's review gave it a "Horrible" rating, arguing that it "wastes an A-list cast on one of the most incoherent and flawed action films in recent memory."

Ultimately, Tin Soldier stands as one of the strangest and most baffling releases in recent years, an utterly bizarre movie whose existence fascinates, confounds, and raises endless questions about how so many big stars signed on.