[Films] Taken
30 Sep 2008 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karohemdWow, I don't think I've come out of a film recently and really thought I'd wasted my money. I was lured to Taken because it was on when I wanted to see something (I would have been too late for Righteous Kill), it has a 7.8 (so not bad at all) rating on imdb and it's directed by they guy who did District 13 and produced by Luc Besson. How wrong I was.
Basic premise: Divorced, retired navy seals (or some other US govt troubleshooter) op Liam Neeson is obsessed with his 17-year-old daughter who lives with her mum and her stupidly-rich stepdad. He grudgingly agrees to sign a statement to allow his daughter to travel to Paris with her step-sister (allegedly to go to museums and shit but in reality they're going to tour around Europe following U2 on their tour). In Paris, they meet a nice guy at the airport who shares their taxi and invites them to a party in the evening. They promptly get abducted while her dad is listening on the phone and it gets worse from there.
Liam Neeson (LN) gets his secret op mates to find out that the kidnappers spoke Albanian from a specific town in Albania where the evil kidnappers come from who are the main players on the live meat market. He then flies to Paris and goes to the flat, finds his daughter's (K) phone, takes out the memory card and finds the photo the spotter took at the airport, cunningly finding his reflection. At the aiport, he finds the spotter.
Spotter: *runs away, dies* (first victim)
LN calls old French black ops mate who tells him to check out the hookers. LN hires an "Albanian translator", pisses off a pimp to plant a bug on him, and gets the translator to translate what he's talking about to his mates. Finds out there's a job at a building site. At the building site, he poses as a builder and finds a makeshift brothel. He looks for his daughter, doesn't find her but one of the girls has her jacket. As he tries to find out where she got it from, he gets jumped and kills everyone. He grabs the hooker with K's jacket, a ridiculous car chase ensues in which the rest of them die. He then puts up the hooker in a dingy hotel room and hooks her up to a drip and stuff (nobody knows where he got the medical supplies from). Next morning, the hooker tells him K is in the house with "the red door in paradise". Obviously, that's the Rue de Paradis so he goes there, finds a house with a red door, goes in posing as his French mate with a broad American accent, finds K's kidnappers and kills everyone except one who he tortures until he tells him who bought the women and then lets him die, anyway. (the bodycount must be at 20 or 25 by now).
LN then visits his mate again, shoots his wife in the arm to make him find that buyer. He's got an address so off he goes.
At the address is a big party with a lot of posh people which he gets access to by posing as a French cop (without speaking any word of French). He soon finds the secret entrance, killing a few bodyguards and eventually finds the market which is set up like a peepshow (central stage, bidders in cubicles around). He poses as a waiter in one of the cubicles. The last item on sale is K so he forces the Arabic bloke in the cubicle to bid for and buy her. As he gets out of the cubicle, he gets one over the head and goes down. When he comes to, the meat market owner has a little chat and then tells his goons to "kill him quietly". Obviously, he gets out of that in inconceivable ways, too and kills everyone, including the owner but not before he tells him that there's a yacht.
Out LN runs, after a fast car to where the boat is moored but the boat gets away so he knocks out (or kills, who cares) the driver and follows the yacht on the wrong side of the road in a ridiculously fast car. Overtaking a slow boat in a fast car apparently takes a lot longer than running on foot after a fast car so eventually after much camera shaking and glare and loud screeches he gets on a bridge, jumps down onto the yacht and kills everyone, getting a little bit more battered and bloodied on the way (the sheik's bodyguard proves to be the toughest fight) until he finds K in the sheik's room. He shoots him in the head and takes his daughter home, having left at least 50 dead bodies behind. Finis.
I mean, I watch a lot of rubbish. Wanted was rubbish but it was entertaining rubbish. This I just wanted to end because the plot and LN's surviving every fight against huge odds was so contrived. The fights were just brutal in shaky cam style, there was no coolness or panache, it was boring as hell.
Basic premise: Divorced, retired navy seals (or some other US govt troubleshooter) op Liam Neeson is obsessed with his 17-year-old daughter who lives with her mum and her stupidly-rich stepdad. He grudgingly agrees to sign a statement to allow his daughter to travel to Paris with her step-sister (allegedly to go to museums and shit but in reality they're going to tour around Europe following U2 on their tour). In Paris, they meet a nice guy at the airport who shares their taxi and invites them to a party in the evening. They promptly get abducted while her dad is listening on the phone and it gets worse from there.
Liam Neeson (LN) gets his secret op mates to find out that the kidnappers spoke Albanian from a specific town in Albania where the evil kidnappers come from who are the main players on the live meat market. He then flies to Paris and goes to the flat, finds his daughter's (K) phone, takes out the memory card and finds the photo the spotter took at the airport, cunningly finding his reflection. At the aiport, he finds the spotter.
Spotter: *runs away, dies* (first victim)
LN calls old French black ops mate who tells him to check out the hookers. LN hires an "Albanian translator", pisses off a pimp to plant a bug on him, and gets the translator to translate what he's talking about to his mates. Finds out there's a job at a building site. At the building site, he poses as a builder and finds a makeshift brothel. He looks for his daughter, doesn't find her but one of the girls has her jacket. As he tries to find out where she got it from, he gets jumped and kills everyone. He grabs the hooker with K's jacket, a ridiculous car chase ensues in which the rest of them die. He then puts up the hooker in a dingy hotel room and hooks her up to a drip and stuff (nobody knows where he got the medical supplies from). Next morning, the hooker tells him K is in the house with "the red door in paradise". Obviously, that's the Rue de Paradis so he goes there, finds a house with a red door, goes in posing as his French mate with a broad American accent, finds K's kidnappers and kills everyone except one who he tortures until he tells him who bought the women and then lets him die, anyway. (the bodycount must be at 20 or 25 by now).
LN then visits his mate again, shoots his wife in the arm to make him find that buyer. He's got an address so off he goes.
At the address is a big party with a lot of posh people which he gets access to by posing as a French cop (without speaking any word of French). He soon finds the secret entrance, killing a few bodyguards and eventually finds the market which is set up like a peepshow (central stage, bidders in cubicles around). He poses as a waiter in one of the cubicles. The last item on sale is K so he forces the Arabic bloke in the cubicle to bid for and buy her. As he gets out of the cubicle, he gets one over the head and goes down. When he comes to, the meat market owner has a little chat and then tells his goons to "kill him quietly". Obviously, he gets out of that in inconceivable ways, too and kills everyone, including the owner but not before he tells him that there's a yacht.
Out LN runs, after a fast car to where the boat is moored but the boat gets away so he knocks out (or kills, who cares) the driver and follows the yacht on the wrong side of the road in a ridiculously fast car. Overtaking a slow boat in a fast car apparently takes a lot longer than running on foot after a fast car so eventually after much camera shaking and glare and loud screeches he gets on a bridge, jumps down onto the yacht and kills everyone, getting a little bit more battered and bloodied on the way (the sheik's bodyguard proves to be the toughest fight) until he finds K in the sheik's room. He shoots him in the head and takes his daughter home, having left at least 50 dead bodies behind. Finis.
I mean, I watch a lot of rubbish. Wanted was rubbish but it was entertaining rubbish. This I just wanted to end because the plot and LN's surviving every fight against huge odds was so contrived. The fights were just brutal in shaky cam style, there was no coolness or panache, it was boring as hell.
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Date: 30/9/08 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 30/9/08 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 30/9/08 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 30/9/08 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1/10/08 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 1/10/08 10:49 am (UTC)It sounds like the kind of film that stands or falls because of the star. And I've always thought Liam Neeson was a bit dull.
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 10:57 am (UTC)They should have cast Steven Seagal (who's only a year older), then it would have been at least cheesy and self-referential. ;o)
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1/10/08 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1/10/08 11:55 am (UTC)Nathan, the Toxic Pixie
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1/10/08 12:15 pm (UTC)"Taken" looked dreadfully serious, whilst "Shoot 'em up" was amusing :)
Nathan, the Toxic Pixie
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 01:55 pm (UTC)Incidentally, I thought of District 13 when Neeson scoots along a ledge around the courtyard wall of the apartment building to get from one window to another. David Belle would just have jumped across and through the other window, it was hardly further than two metres.
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 02:05 pm (UTC)There's a good Woody Allen sketch from towards the end of his career when he's making more 'important' films with real social relevance, about him meeting aliens. They say they like his films, but could he please go back to making funny ones?
Nathan, the Toxic Pixie
no subject
Date: 3/10/08 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3/10/08 09:21 am (UTC)And yes, I'd agree with that!
Nathan, the Toxic Pixie
no subject
Date: 1/10/08 12:52 pm (UTC)Glad i didn't - it does sound rather rubbish!
So you weren't taken with it?
Date: 3/10/08 12:50 pm (UTC)I think you're possibly being a little overly harsh on it. The trailer quite clearly sold it as a film about LN going around killing folk and saving his daughter. And in that regard it lived up to it perfectly. It's nowhere near as polished as Bourne, but I still found it entertaining.
The only hole I felt was Amanda and how everyone seemed to have forgotten about her when he returned.
Re: So you weren't taken with it?
Date: 3/10/08 01:17 pm (UTC)Duh, I completely forgot about her, too. And so seemed her dad...