Top 500? Really?

Rating: 4/10 (22 April 2013)

Taken had the potential to be a really great action movie. The premise really intrigued me as I love movies about revenge and retaliation, people recalling on forgotten skills (Thank you, Sayid Jarrah) and movies starring tall, British men. What I liked was that Liam Neeson, despite his gangly running, was believable as a man capable of all the drastic measures we were witnessing. I also liked that there were some truly unexpected instances of brutality. An unwieldable tunnel vision is the only thing that is believable and acceptable when somebody is fighting for the life of their child.
But man, did I have some problems. The first was in regards to the female characters. Now, before certain male compadres try to tell me that I'm being a whiny feminist they should know that I'm relatively traditional myself and actually enjoy certain traditional male-female roles and customs. I will always appreciate a door opened, an arm given or a jacket offered. However, the first thing that I did when I got home was to check and see if the writers of this were male.
They were.
It would be wrong of you to assume that I think that every male writer doesn't understand women and are all stuck in a medieval outlook on our gender as a whole. But the three women in the film were exactly as follows:
1. THE CRONE ex-wife 2. THE TRAMP friend (blond of course) who causes all the trouble 3. THE MADONNA daughter whose virginity is at stake as each minute passes by
I know it happens and it's part of the DNA of many, many action movies but I'm sorry... one of these days we'll have to get past this. If James Bond is capable of evolving from one-dimensional females, anybody is.
The dialog itself was pretty weak. For example, the daughter finally asks her father specifically what his job was. "I'm a preventer" he says. "What do you prevent?" she asks wide-eyed. "Bad things from happening." There was also a BBQ with some old "black-op" buddies that was good for nothing else but disposing of expository information. The best part of the film is a pretty decent speech delivered by a good actor which was done ten times better by Mel Gibson in Ransom that everybody has already seen in the preview. Things go his way through 99.9% of the film; pipes break at an opportune time, mud splashes in an opportune place, a reflection appears at an opportune angle... I was starting to believe that Neeson's character was just incredibly lucky rather than exceptionally skilled, especially since out of the ninety Albanians he took out none of them, even with machine guns, could hit water if they fell out of a boat.
There's always an unspoken request for a suspension of belief when dealing with an action hero's unbelievable luck. If a movie is done well it's something I will do gladly. I just couldn't do it this time. Not with Jason Bourne still on the loose.
P.S. Over the years, I have learned that there are certain times where I can tell that nobody wants to hear my honest opinion unless I'm about to agree with them. Tonight, I sensed that this would be one of those times so when my male companions asked if I liked it I safely respond with my default answer: "I was entertained."