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Taken
(2009)
Directed by
Pierre Morel
Review by
Zach Saltz
Pierre Morel’s
Taken
is a pleasant return to
a simpler, more straightforward brand of action picture.
Gone are the multiple mind-numbing twists of the
Bourne
series, the
questionable ethical imperatives of
The Dark Knight, and the
quirky humor of the
Transporter
films; this is a raw, bare, bone-crushing tale of bad guys doing
very bad things and the one everyman hero somehow impervious to both
immorality and flying bullets (but still dashing in a suit even after
having been shot several times) who imposes his violent revenge on the
bad guys at the cost of exploding buildings, destroyed boats, and a poor
Albanian translator who simply does not understand why he is there in
the first place.
The episodic story seems recycled from a rehashed
24 episode, but a movie like
this does not require originality: Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, an
ex-government operative who spends his newfound retirement time trying
to reconnect with his teenaged daughter, Kim, even as his bitter ex-wife
looks on in disgust.
When
Kim announces plans to travel to Paris – where she will be accompanied only by her friends –
Bryan acts as the lone skeptical voice of reason.
“I don't think a seventeen-year-old should be traveling alone,”
he tells his daughter, but to no avail: soon, he is dropping her off at
the airport and, like other embarrassing parents, signing with his hands
to call him as soon as she arrives.
But of course Bryan proves correct in his initial
reticence, and Kim and her friend are quickly kidnapped by a group of
Albanian hoods who sell them into a sex slave operation.
As soon as Byran is told he has 96 hours to get his daughter
back, he boards a jet, buys an Albanian dictionary, and hits the
Parisian red-light district.
Along the way, he makes enemies with the corrupt head of the
Paris police, not so much because he threatens to expose the shady
backroom dealings of the force with the hoods, but because there is a
very real chance Bryan may in fact destroy the entire city before he
reaches his daughter (“Jean Claude, I'll tear down the Eiffel Tower if I
have to,” he tells him.)
While most other action movies of this caliber
would invest a considerable amount of time in overwrought backstory
attempting to conspiratorially connect the sex slave sting with other
conspicuous characters in the story (I was hedging my bets that Kim’s
obnoxiously rich new stepfather was involved in the scheme somehow),
Taken
ignores this temptation
and is content to provide more revolving fists than revelations.
That is not to say that the story here is weak, however; props
must be given to the first half hour of the movie, which wisely takes
time in building up considerable suspense in the story’s set-up.
But it is the action sequences that make
Taken deliver, and director
Morel (along with screenwriter Luc Bresson) provide audiences with
remarkably entertaining stunts and chases through back alleys and dark
corners, all the while maintaining its PG-13 rating.
Indeed, the fact that
Taken is PG-13 in the first place may reveal something about film
violence on a whole – that audiences may want it, but they do not wish
to see its unglamorous effects in full detail.
This is why unrealistic PG-13 violence exists: to maintain the
light atmosphere of an action flick rather than get tied up in the moral
consequences of killing.
There is not a single ounce of blood spilt in the picture, and while
this may understandably bother some cynical observers, I felt that such
portrayals would have been a waste of time in a movie as effervescent
and rapid-fire as this.
Another surprise of
Taken
is Liam Neeson’s husky
performance as Bryan.
It is
hard to believe someone as unnerved and savage as the
Bryan
character could be portrayed effectively by the same sweet-faced actor
who played the benevolent Oskar Schindler, as well as the sympathetic
stepfather to the love-sick son in
Love Actually.
Neeson’s Bryan is a little like Daniel Craig’s “new”
James Bond – physically menacing and not needing the same high-tech
gadgetry as other cinematic vigilantes.
Taken is
the type of film Clint Eastwood would have made not too long ago, with
its hero rigidly defying both the indignant people around him, as well
as the orders to follow the aims of a society pooled with corrupt
corrigibles.
It is a film
made with few cheap frills and surprises – just a good old fashioned
revenge story, whose simplicity and economy of story prove to resonate
better than other films of the same genre trying to both outbulk and
outwit its confused viewers.
Rating:
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