Taken is ridiculous, and sort of fascinating. It plays as a stereotypical extreme of conservative fears of foreign lands and immigration, before enacting death penalty justice. I’m not sure why the movie isn’t called Pimp Killer, which doesn’t dance around its exploitative nature and is a lot catchier. Liam Neeson is Bryan, a divorced security expert who values nothing more than time spent with his 17-year-old daughter Kim (former Lost star Maggie Grace, who’s not bad at looking 17.) Bryan panics when Kim and her friend Amanda plan a trip to Paris. Everybody knows only bad things happen overseas. Expectedly, they’re in the City of Love for about an hour before they’re kidnapped by Albanians and put into a prostitution ring. Before Bryan starts murdering pimps, I was ready to describe his character as Oskar Schindler of the child sex-slave trade. But really, despite his many opportunities, he doesn’t care about saving girls who aren’t Kim. A torture-interrogation scene is too calculatedly Abu Ghraib. Having made the alright French action film *District B13*, director Pierre Morel sides with American prejudice. Taken is like the heroic pimp-killing scene at the end of Taxi Driver, pitched completely at face value.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
I don’t know what to make of you, Mark Palermo. You think the concept of ‘Taken’ is preposterously unrealistic, a farce of paranoid cliches, but you give a nudge and a wink to Pink Panther 2? Hmm.
I just seen Taken last night and above all else, it was an entertaining film. I’m not going to say Liam’s actions are realistic, they’re aren’t, it’s a movie after all, duh, but the whole thing flows in an intense, verging on creepy-at-every-turn clip. It also wants to engage your brain if you’re willing.
Bryan, Liam’s character, for those who need things spelled out for them, is world weary. He knows of the deep seeded ugliness in the world and of man. He’s looking for his daughter, Mark, and he has a limited amount of time to do so. He’s not a one man army trying to save the world and stop the underground, but very real sex slave trade. That would be the very definition of unrealistic. It will always exist.
No, he wants to find his daughter, save her and that means a lot of actions on his part that fall anywhere from borderline gray to outright black and black. Dark? Yes. Intense? Yes. Manipulative entertainment? Yes. Moments of underlying truth? Yes. Entertaining? You bet.
Anyone who writes off the likes of ‘Taken’ with its dark subject matter, but celebrates the banality of a sequel which also happens to be a continuation of a horrible remake to boot is one person who’s not sitting at my table.
I also enjoyed Taken. Unrealistic…duh… that’s why we go to the movies! If I wanted reality I’d stay home and think about student loans for the evening.
Maybe they could make the sequel more realistic for you Mark, 2 hours of Bryan taking on more and more work and eventually turning to a life of crime just so he can pay for his daughter’s astronomical therapy bills.
I have to say I was quite impressed at Liam Neesons’ try at hard-bastard. I’ve not seen him in a role like that before and I thought he did quite well and was beliveable. Not that the stor was terribly believeble. Yes, the ultimate story of kidnap and forced prostitution is all very real and happens more than we realise, blah blah, but the hard-man dad going round killing everyone in sight to track down his daughter (who was dumb enough to let a stranger she just met at the airport (of all places!!) know where she lived). He didn’t seem to have any compassion for any of the other girls, though they were in the same situation, and most likely had daddies out there fretting about them too (though likely just not hard enough to go out there and find them). Actiony and dramatic enough to captivate this cynic for the entirety of the film.