American fascism?

Rating: 3/10 (5 October 2008)

The action scenes of this movie are terrific and enjoyable but they are in the service of some very nasty ideological messages: sex-trafficking is simply a displacement of America's paranoid war on terror, in which the revenge plot gives the audience a fantasy solution to the mess of Iraq and Afghanistan. The choice of Albanian villains is cunning as it conveniently blurs the distinction between post-Communist and Muslim 'threat', and the choice of Paris as a centre of white slavery and police collusion is patently a retaliation for French resistance to the neo-con agenda. And while the fact that the hero is also a father allows the audience to sympathise with his increasing desperation, his daughter is clearly a symbol of America's elite social class: in time-honoured fashion, she is the virginal princess who has to be rescued from the clutches of immoral foreign (Eastern) baddies (the idea that sex-traffickers would kidnap a rich American tourist for other purposes than ransom is laughable). If we believe this movie, George Bush's tax-cutting pampering of the rich has clearly failed to make America's upper middle classes feel secure: better not step out of the country, and lock up your (millionaire) daughters, the only ones worth saving. This is a backlash movie: anti-feminist (it is no coincidence that the daughter's travelling companion declares her promiscuous intentions before she is 'taken' - this is propaganda for abstinence), anti-liberal (good America v evil outside 'threats'), anti-Bourne trilogy (let's stop demonizing the CIA! ), and socially exclusive. If you thought the use of torture was indefensible, this movie will set your mind at rest. Why are such invidious films made? Does it have anything to do with the corporate ownership of Hollywood?