Pimps & Assassins: Do the Math

Rating: Null/10 (15 October 2008)

Taken (2008) **
Is it better to evaluate a movie on what's good about it? Or is it better to judge a movie on what's bad about it? If 2/3s of a movie are competently entertaining, but another third shockingly dreadful does the good still outweigh the bad? That's the issue with the new Luc Besson/Pierre Morrel Liam Neeson starring vehicle Taken.
Neeson plays Bryan, a former spy/assassin of the government sort. He's retired, now living in California to be close to his daughter, who lives with her mother and step father in a lavish mansion. She wants to go to France with a friend, and she needs her father's permission. He's hesitant but lets her go, only to find out she's actually following U2 around adding to his nervousness. Of course he's right to be nervous, as she is kidnapped immediately after settling into the city. This occurs while he's on the phone with her, which conveniently has been recorded so that his ex-assassin buddies can analyze the call, pinpoint that the kidnappers speak Albanian, with an accent they can apparently narrow down to one village, and then determine that the man speaking into the phone is named Marco. With this information he travels to Paris to search out his daughter employing his mad skills.
While there he pieces together one by one who is behind it, finds them, finds where the girl has gone, kills a lot of people and then, well I won't spoil it but I'm sure you know where this is going. The plot line in the picture is very, very standard. Allow me to quote film critic Jules Brenner in his review of Taken: Just calling this formulaic doesn't cover it. The script should be credited to the computer software template that originated it." Now that is a gem of a soundbyte. It's also pretty much bang on. Besson never really takes any time to seriously look at a very serious subject. It's just a conduit through which he can insert standard action movie happenings. Just because a movie is made in Europe doesn't mean it's any less prone to Hollywood clichés.
In describing the movie, I'm realizing more than I did when I started writing how mediocre the actual story is in the film. But, for 2/3s of the movie you can kind of forget about that most of the time. Fact is, the action sequences are quite well done, and director Morrel realizes that the key to keeping the audience from realizing just how predictable and substandard his story really is, is to never give them a chance to think about it. The film moves at breakneck speed, and when the hunt is really on its quite entertaining.
Liam Neeson goes from totally unbelievable to mildly believable by the end of the movie. He gives a good performance, but sometimes he's a bit of a distraction. Question: Is he American or British here? Sometime he doesn't seem to speak with an accent, others he clearly does. All his ex assassin friends are American (save for a French guy in France), he lives in the US and his American wife refers to him sacrificing for the good of the country. Anyway, that's irrelevant.
So that's what's good about Taken. Now, the bad. Well we've established that the plot originated from a standard action movie template. It's got the usual foreign baddies and fat cat Arab's lusting for Western virgins. And for an underground human smuggling operation, it's surprisingly easy to find. Oh, and of course, the bad guys all have terrible aim while the good guy's is dead on - but that's so old hat in any movie with a gun fight I probably just wasted 20 seconds typing this out.
So this is all forgivable given the success of the nonstop action in denying us the opportunity to reflect on the plot. What's not forgivable is just how shockingly awful the first half hour of Taken is. How bad is it? I don't even know if I can describe it. Things really go down hill when a bunch of cheery, wildly unbelievable former assassins show up at Neeson's door.... with beer, and chips and hotdogs for a BBQ. They chat nonchalantly about jobs in Beirut and so on and so forth. The effect can only be described as unintentionally hilarious, or perhaps the most unbelievably miscalculated plot point since Micky Rooney played an Asian in Breakfast at Tiffani's.
Then there is the daughter and her friend. I don't know if they're bad actors or just entirely at the mercy of the worst written characters I've ever seen in a film with such prestige. For that matter, I assume Besson must have wrote in French then translated to English. Lost in translation is the only conception I have to explain such awful lines ("They're there, I can hear them!"). Its no word of a lie that I almost walked out after the opening third confused as to whether give Taken half a star for sheer ineptitude or 5 for being the funniest comedy I'd seen in ages.
But, I stuck it out. I guess I'm glad I did. In the end, yes I was entertained. Then I had the opening conundrum. I was really almost ready to give Taken a mild pass. But now that I've come to the end of the review, I've been given the time to reflect. And Taken is still dogmatically formulaic. Maybe if you don't think about it afterward you'll be satisfied. Unfortunately for me, I thought about it.