A Paranoid's Wet Dream

Rating: 4/10 (7 August 2012)

The only reason I'm giving Taken 4 stars rather than one or two is the fact that, admittedly, it's a well-executed action flick. It's been compared to movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and indeed, despite the excessive use of hand held jittery cameras that place it firmly in the 2000's, it manages to create action scenes more coherent and flowing than almost any other movie made this decade; this combined with the short runtime makes me believe that I might have liked it a lot at age 11 or 12. Of course, it's not a movie that should be watched by a 12 year old kid, and that's just one of the reasons I consider it one of the most poorly conceived movies ever made.
Fans of Taken often defend it against the critics by claiming that it isn't meant to be taken seriously - that it's an escapist fantasy. The fact is that it's anything but. Rather than providing escape from reality, it's a movie that feeds on dangerous paranoia - the personal paranoia of over-protective, suffocating parents, and the collective paranoia of xenophobic patriots. The movie reinforces the paranoid fantasy that everybody is after your children and they will suffer greatly if you ever let them leave your sight for even a moment; that all foreigners are out to get you; and that if you ever step out of the comfort zone of your precious US of A, you'll immediately be kidnapped and sold as a prostitute. Of course, you can escape that fate, but only if your dad is a former CIA agent and proficient in various methods of murder and torture - the other victims aren't that lucky, as we can see that the loving father doesn't really give a damn about any of them (or about his daughter's good friend, either). Honestly, I'm really quite concerned about the effect this might have on people watching who have shades of notions of those fantasies already.
Which leads me to the second big problem - that the subject matter that supplies the plot for this alleged "escapist fantasy" is very realistic, very delicate and difficult, and is glossed over and trivialized magnificently. Apparently we aren't supposed to care that most of the victims of human trafficking aren't American tourists with cellphones and CIA dads to help them escape; the protagonist doesn't really care either. The movie suggests that human trafficking isn't really a problem, really, as long as we leave it to those primitive Europeans and don't let our own children go to that filthy continent. The truth is that human trafficking is a problem so global and so very real on a day-to-day basis, that the very fact that the movie tries to deal with it undermines any pretense to escapism.
Taken caters mainly to two groups - young teenagers, who'll enjoy the action and the overall coolness and in the process may be lead to believe that this is a realistic representation; and overprotective dads, for whom it will reinforce their biggest nightmares, and it may make their paranoia much more extreme. In both cases, the movie can do more harm than good; the protagonist is so cool and impressive (an admittedly strong performance from Liam Neeson) that those viewers are likely to idolize him. Indeed the movie never asks us to question his morality, and instead expects us to despise and villainize the more sensible mother, who's actually showing some healthy respect and trust in her daughter, and of course, the stereotypically balding, chubby and above all rich stepfather, who seems like a pretty decent guy but whom we're supposed to hate anyway because he doesn't share the biological dad's psychosis (and a wasted appearance by the wonderful Xander Berkeley, a superb character actor who here has to play a completely character-less character).
These are just some of my complaints about how dangerous and ill-conceived the movie is; I'm not even getting into the fact that it's completely and ridiculously unrealistic, and extremely poorly paced (the daughter literally meets her kidnapper when she's stepping off the plane, and is kidnapped about five minutes later). I also won't go into the fact that, while Neeson's character is ridiculously paranoid about his daughter going to the dark land of Mordor (France), he shows no qualms whatsoever about leaving her alone with a Christina Aguilera-like pop starlet who promises to get her into show business. Because there's no way that she'll give his daughter drugs, that her entourage will seduce her into decadent parties and orgies, or that her agent will take advantage of her? Oh right, I forgot. They're all Americans. That kinda stuff doesn't happen there.