By Morris Dean
In the 2008 French action thriller Taken, written by Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel, retired CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) relies on his old skills to rescue his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from human traffickers who have kidnapped her while she was travelling in France. At the time, it didn't occur to me that there could or would be a sequel. What, his daughter makes a career of being kidnapped?
Marko, the son of a man who wants his revenge!
Taken 2 starts off with the cousins of the dead traffickers being buried in their hometown of Tropojë, Albania. Their employer Murad (Rade Šerbedžija), and Marko's father, declares emphatically that he will avenge the deaths of all their loved ones, no matter what the cost.
In a Luc Besson action thriller, you know it's going to cost them a lot. And the bad guys, which the Albanians have to be in a film with Liam Neeson, are not going to succeed....
Good thing she remained behind! The way she is able to help Mills escape is fascinating—one of the most interesting sequences I've seen in an action film. Let me just say it begins with Mills, his head inside a black hood as he and Lenore are driven away, carefully counting seconds between turns, noting sounds of bells, birdsong, and musicians. It involves his having a tiny cell phone he's able to access while handcuffed to an overhead pipe; of course, Kim isn't waiting for her cell phone to ring and isn't quite sure where she set it down, but finally Mills reaches her. Does she know where his metal suitcase is—you know the one that contains....?
And there's a twist on the car-chase scene. At least I'd never seen one in which someone who hasn't yet passed her drivers exam is able to elude the cars behind filled with bad guys shooting at her by simply following her father's shouted instructions. He'd had to jump in the car quickly and they hadn't time to switch positions before the bad guys started shooting....
And the fascinating terrain of Istanbul rooftops! Did you know there are paths up there from one building to another—only just a few places where the followed and the followers have to jump from one to another...?
And it works, it all seems real—no CGI in evidence (that I could detect). Well-motivated. You know how vengeful those Middle Europeans can be. You know how dedicated a loving father can be to rescue his beloved ex-wife and daughter. You know how efficient a killer an ex-CIA operative would be. Right? Well, maybe not really, but you'd want him to be, right? He's one of yours.
I've watched a few films that ended up taking me in after all my futile hoping they'd eventually prove themselves. I wasn't taken in by either Taken or Taken 2. You won't be either if you like a well-motivated, well written, well-edited action thriller. Especially if you like Liam Neeson or are in love with Famke Janssen.
Very few subtitles either; "French film" doesn't necessarily mean it's in French. Only the Albanians speak a foreign language.
Afterthought: When I scheduled this review for publication last night, I realized that its title is significantly ambiguous, and the review's next-to-last paragraph doesn't entirely remove it. As that penultimate paragraph indicates, I meant by "not taken in" that the two Taken films didn't disappoint me; I enjoyed and even admired them.
But there's another interpretation. What if I'd been "taken in" because I liked the films? What if, being mere action thrillers—and therefore not deserving of serious attention—they had succeeded in overcoming my critical discrimination and seducing me into the illusion that I had spent a profitable couple of hours each being entertained?
Okay, fine, theoretically. I'm willing to have been both not taken in (in the first sense) and taken in (in the second). That's the best of both worlds, the serious one I live in at times and the frivolous one I inhabit at others.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
| Please comment |
I've seen " Taken " and really liked it ! Am a big Liam Neeson fan ! Have a great Sunday all !
ReplyDeleteWhat's your favorite Liam Neeson film, if you have one? Mine might be Schindler's List. His performance in The Grey was rock solid.
DeleteWhen I scheduled this review for publication last night, I realized that its title is significantly ambiguous, and the review's next-to-last paragraph doesn't entirely remove it. As that penultimate paragraph indicates, I meant by "not taken in" that the two Taken films didn't disappoint me; I enjoyed and even admired them.
ReplyDeleteBut there's another interpretation. What if I'd been "taken in" because I liked the films? What if, being mere action thrillers—and therefore not deserving of serious attention—they had succeeded in overcoming my critical discrimination and seducing me into the illusion that I had spent a profitable couple of hours each being entertained?
Okay, fine, theoretically. I'm willing to have been both not taken in (in the first sense) and taken in (in the second). That's the best of both worlds, the serious one I live in at times and the frivolous one I inhabit at others.
Morris, in your review it sounds as if you are warning us against wasting time watching two movies that sound like they may be such far-fetched tripe as to be almost unwatchable. In your follow up, if I am reading correctly, you say you "enjoyed and even admired them." For those of us who don't watch enough movies or theater to understand all the semantics, hyperbole, and cleverness involved, what am I missing?
ReplyDeleteAs for Leeson, as an admittedly uneducated follower of the arts, I consider him almost as unwatchable as these movies sound like they may be. He is so stiff on screen my theory is the main reason Americans rave about him is because he is European. Is it possibly part of the same syndrome that made the French wild about Jerry Lewis? If Leeson was "just" an American actor I have to wonder if he would be most compared to Sylvester Stallone.
Morris, my apologies - I just realized I forgot to explain the "Leeson" reference instead of Neeson. In case you are not familiar with the vernacular of Neeson detractors, that is our combining of his first and last names to make him sound more American - thereby poking more fun at our perception his stardom is in large part based in his being European.
ReplyDeleteHave you heard the joke about the director having to choose between Neeson and Stallone for the lead in his movie?
Director: "Okay, Sly, let's hear you sound excited." Stallone: "Grunt."
Director: "Okay, Neeson, your turn." Neeson: "Grunt."
Director: "Uhmmm...okay, let's hear you sound serious." Stallone: "Grunt." Neeson: "Grunt."
Director: "Okay, let's break for lunch."
Director, quietly aside to his assistant: "Please give Cruise, Pitt and Lewis one more call to just to make sure they won't take this role."
Motomynd, I always leave it to my readers to decide for themselves whether it would be a waste of their time to watch the movie or movies under review. I seek only to express my own personal response to the movies and give some indication of why.
DeleteAny "waste of time" judgment would be limited to my own time, or to the time of those whom I qualify as sharing my perspective—which I believe you generally do not.
In fact, my first sense of "being taken in" covers the situation where I watch a movie without liking its first minutes, or its first hour, in the futile hope that it will redeem itself and I will start to like it and end up liking it. By definition, if that hope proves futile, then I will end up disappointed and feeling I have wasted my time. My time.
I much prefer being taken in in the second sense and being thoroughly entertained by a film, even one that I might have to be in a frivolous mood to watch. That is, I realize that movies like Taken and Taken 2 are far-fetched. But for me there's a time for such movies, if they are as admirably well-done as these were. Then the pay-off is that they are well-worth my time to watch and enjoy them.
I rarely am fooled into watching a movie that I don't start to like within at least 15 or 20 minutes. It's a little embarrassing to admit it, but one of the things that I can be fooled by is who's in it. There was a movie recently with Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage that was just dreadful, but my wife and I watched the whole thing, both of us hoping the whole time that it was just going to have to get better, a lot better. It never did.
Clearly our estimates of Neeson's acting are quite different. Which of his films have you watched? And I guess it's appropriate to ask in your case: Which of them did you hate the most? Or, which of them was the biggest waste of your time?
Thanks for explaining why you wrote "Leeson"; I didn't think it was simply a typo, but I didn't know what to make of it until you explained.
Morris, your rampantly developing sense of humor is something to behold. The thought that anyone would watch an hour of a movie without liking it, in the hope it would redeem itself, almost made me fall out of my chair laughing. Good one!
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I consider most movies a waste of time. I have not managed to watch any of Neeson's commercially or critically acclaimed movies all the way through - so none wasted much of my time and I can't say which I liked least. I would nominate his role as narrator in 'The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition' as his best work, and consider it an effort that was definitely not a waste of time.
Ha, and you are master of satire, sir, to flick me off your sleeve so effortlessly by pretending that I was only having fun with the notion of sticking with a film in the hope that something redeeming would be revealed if I but stayed with it long enough!
DeleteOn Monday, the day after I published this review, a passage from a book I'm reading struck me for its aptness to the discussion of "mere action thrillers" versus "serious" movies. I was also struck by the timing of the passage's coming to my notice, even if I'm not suggesting that there is something providential about it. The following excerpt is from Muriel Barbery's 2006 novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog [in French: L'Elegance du Herisson]. Renée Michel, a self-taught, extremely well-read recluse "in hiding" as the concierge for eight luxury apartments, is the voice:
ReplyDeleteWhere the cinema is concerned, however, my eclecticism is in full flower. I like American blockbusters and art-house films. In fact, for a long time I preferred to watch entertaining British or American films, with the exception of a few serious works that I reserved for my esthetic sensibilities, since my passionate or empathetic sensibilities were exclusively focused on entertainment. Greenaway fills me with admiration, interest and yawns, wheras I weep buckets of syrupy tears every time Melly and Mammy climb the stairway at the Butler mansion after Bonnie Blue dies; as for Blade Runner, it is a masterpiece of high-end escapism. For years my inevitable conclusion has been that the films of the seventh art are beautiful, powerful, and soporific, and that blockbuster movies are pointless, very moving, and immensely satisfying. [p. 72]