Movie - Week #3 - Taken

[InfiniteStates]

I remember ages ago there were two camps about which was better: Man on Fire or Taken, so it only seems sensible to follow Man On Fire week with Taken week
A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who was kidnapped on a trip to Paris to be sold into prostitution.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Current rating: 7.9

[Symonator]

I have seen this recently but i'll rewatch for movie week to jog me memory

[InfiniteStates]

I got this finished mid-week sometime, and probably should have written about it then, when it was fresh, but meh...

In summary: ex-CIA double-hard bastard is trying to make amends with his semi-estranged daughter and divorced wife, after choosing his job over his family. Against his better (or just paranoid?) judgement, he lets his daughter go to Paris, where she quickly gets preyed upon by Eastern European women traffickers. Fortunately she was on the phone to her dad at the time of abduction, so he could set off in hot pursuit with a 4 day window to find her or give up hope. And so begins a rampage across Paris with a mild dose of betrayal from an old friend.

It's a great premise for a good action movie, and that is what it delivers, although I found the direction in some of the action to suffer from what I call the Bourne syndrome: camera too close, too shakey and cutting too fast, to leave you feeling slightly motion sick and incapable of telling WTF is going on.

However, pick at the surface and you find it doesn't go very deep. For instance, why would a trained agent set out in pursuit of a car on foot? It's just by chance that their paths intersect again later. Similarly, at the end, his daughter, despite being through a hugely traumatic ordeal, is instantly back to happy-go-lucky mall-rat at the end of the film with not a psycological hiccup to be seen. And no doubt other instances that I forget of action-hero luck winning over solid tactics.

Taken vs Man on Fire: Taken gets going quicker and is more relentless once it does get going. However, it is a much shallower experience, with minimal emotional connection to the characters and a meagre tip of the hat to reality. Man on Fire is more the thinking man's film, but Taken gives a good, if disposable, action experience.

I'll definitely be checking the sequel

[DJ-Daz]

I agree 99% with InfiniteStates.

But it's not all bad, overall the film is quite good, it's a great action film, and it is based on reality, although not many kidnapped daughters will have a dad that was an agent in the secret service/CIA.

Sure the comparison between Man on Fire and Taken will show Taken in a dimmer, seedier, and less thought provoking light, but it's not meant to be thinking mans film, it is an action film when all said and done.

Also why shouldn't the girl be happy? She survived and made new connections with her father. Even miserable people can smile now and again, I'm proof of that!

But still there are times when you want both, you want to think about it and you want some bone breaking hand to hand combat, for that there can be only one, and when I see it I'll post it, so far I dont think it exists, I'll rack me brain to try and find a title that fits both shoes.

[InfiniteStates]

Oops - my "review" came off quite negative, but it was a good film and I enjoyed it. I guess I'm just slightly disappointed to see it rated slightly higher than MoF on IMDB.