Posts tagged taken

Philosophy time!  Imagine, say, you were working for the canteen over at the Cobra organization headquarters — are you innately evil?  Say, GI Joe busts in the lair and starts messing up your place of employment — do you deserve a beatdown for working for Cobra?  Are you automatically evil by association?

Then again, this won’t be about that — we’re here to talk about Taken, which took quite a while (it showed in France back in February ’08!) to get here — and it’s okay!

Liam Neeson stars in this Luc-Besson-written-and-produced kick-ass-athon, which seems like an unlikely choice — Qui-Gon’s not exactly known for being an action hero — and he shows that he’s still got it!  (Think “Darkman”-Neeson)

In it, he plays Bryan Mills, an ex-spy whose daughter’s been kidnapped (bad choice, bok) — and that may well be all you need to know: you don’t mess with daughters of ex-spies.  What follows is a series of constantly-progressing acts of righteous(?) violence, torture and mayhem, because Bryan Mills is someone who gets things done, regardless of whose asses he has to kick.

What really works in this movie is Neeson: his slightly-calm demeanor only increases the shock factor when watching him krav-maga(?) some poor sap who just happens to be in the way.  It also helps that the bone-smashing “crunch!” sound effects sound like they have their decibels dialed up a notch from the normal audio to really bring in the “oomph” of every hit.

I may just have to forgive Transporter 3 for that interrogation scene alone — so if you let out a chuckle when you see on-screen characters delivering that crunchy karate chop to the neck, see it!

5/5

P.S.

I recommend this movie for anyone who’s ever been wronged by an evil cabdriver, a snooty waiter, or that lady at the bank who isn’t happy that you’ve chosen to do business with them.  Not that it’s particularly nice (or right) to solve problems with violence, but there’s a noticeable hurt-whoever-gets-in-the-way-regardless-of-how-big-or-small-his-involvement-with-the-bad-guy-is going on.  Take that, mister conductor who constantly lies about how occupied the jeep/fx/bus is!

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Many thanks to Azrael and Viva for the invites!