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Taken is a wonder! Just a few minutes into it, I was wondering, “Why does Maggie Grace look like she’s in her late 20s rather than the 17-year-old she’s supposed to be playing?” A few minutes more, I was wondering if I’ve ever seen a more self-centered, spoilt, materialistic person than this character. The little girl who wanted everything in the original Willie Wonka would have been a close second to Grace’s character. Her stepfather presents her with what looked to be either a race horse or a polo pony at her party and she drops the Karaoke machine dad Liam Neeson has just given her and jumps up and down hugging the step-father while squealing, “I love you, I love you, I love you!”
The next day she and mom are browbeating Neeson to sign a consent form for her to go to Paris with a 17-year-old girlfriend. (At that point, I was wondering, “Who’s going to feed and care for the horse while she’s gone? Stepdad probably has a whole racing stable to do that, but has the brat even ridden the animal yet?) When dad hesitates, daughter bursts into tears and runs from restaurant.
In between those scenes, Neeson establishes his credentials as a really bad ex-CIA (or some government agency) with reflexes quicker than anyone his age could have as he beats the living crap out of some weirdo who tries to knife the young female singer he and some other ex-spook friends have been hired to provide security for at a concert. One might wonder how the attacker managed to get through all the other backstage security to get that close, but a bigger mystery to me was an earlier scene where the singer is doing voice exercises with her voice coach while preparing to go on stage. What rock star has ever had singing lessons??
Anyway, Neeson’s character is tough, but apparently not too smart because he buys his daughter’s story that two 17-year-olds are going to Paris to visit the museums and signs the consent form. Even at the last moment when he discovers they’re really planning to follow a U2 tour through Europe, he doesn’t jerk her lying butt back in the car and take her home. Parents today are just too permissive.
Instead, the girls get off the plane in Paris and immediately get picked up by an airport version of a lounge lizard who finds out where they’re staying. This info is then relayed to a gang of Bulgarians specializing in white slavery, who proceed to kidnap the two. Fortunately this happens while daughter is on the phone with dad. Had she been talking to her flakey materialistic mom, the story would end at that point, but Neeson hands down some fatherly advice to shout out descriptions of the kidnappers when they grab her so he’ll know who to hunt down later.
From that point on, with something like 96 hours before his daughter disappears forever into the white slavery system, there are plenty of copy-cat Bourne adventures as Neeson kicks butt all over Paris, with the usual allotment of karate chops, beatings, shootings, stabbings, garroting, and electrical torture. No danger of any spoilers. When Neeson says in the TV ad for the film, “I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I will kill you,” does anyone doubt what the outcome will be?
While this is going on, one is left to wonder about many other parts of the film. Like why do the bad guys kidnap the two girls from an upscale apartment amid loud music, screams and scuffling and no one sees two struggling people being carried off? This becomes even more mystifying when we learn later that the airport pick-up simply invited another girl to a party and delivered his already doped and until-then-willing victim to the white-slavers’ doorstep in a seedy part of town.
Another mystery: how desperate for a job would an English-Bulgarian interpreter have to be to wait on a traffic island in a seedy red-light district until a would-be employer drives up?
Also, why did the film-makers assume that the top ranks of the French police are as corrupt as a third-world constable? Why do they also think all prostitutes are young and good-looking? Age and appearance has nothing to do with whoring. I’ve seen arrest photos on the vice squad’s bulletin board that would turn your stomach, yet they’re still selling it to someone.
Another thing I wondered about was the scene of a whorehouse set up on a remote construction site, with workmen lined up to trade their euros for the number of a partitioned room where the prosties—drugged to a zombie-like state—are awaiting. Now I’ve done hard blue-collar labor in my younger years, but no one ever gave me a long enough lunch break for that sort of action. Besides, why would a worker bring a pocketful of money to work?
I also wondered during a close-quarter car chase through the muddy construction area why none of the following cars had any mud splattered on their windshields until the script called for one such muddy vehicle to crash into a piece of heavy equipment. Subsequent chases by foot and car on the streets of Paris also puzzled me—I’ve been to Paris, and everyone there drives like they’re fleeing from killers.
There were the usual shoot-out wonderments: How come the bad guys can spray the area with machine-guns and never hit the hero, while he picks them off with a pistol, the shortest-ranged and most inaccurate of all firearms? How can someone riddle the body of a car without the bullets punching through and killing those inside? And when they riddle the hero’s car, why are the motor and tires never damaged?
Later when Neeson is questioning a bad guy with the help of electric wires attached to the metal chair to which the villain is strapped, I couldn’t help but wonder if the ex-CIA daddy last used that method while interrogating suspected rebels in some banana-republic.
Neeson’s character also was wonderful at reviving virtually overnight girls who had been rendered almost comatose by drugs injected into them by the baddies. At least one is in better shape than he is by the end of the adventure.
I also wondered throughout the movie how much time Neeson and the other real actors actually spend on screen. With all the car chases and fights, you’re probably watching stunt men and doubles through most of the movie.
But the movie’s two biggest mysteries to me are 1) why are the bad guys kidnapping rich 17-year-olds when there are millions of female drug-addicts all over Europe who take up prostitution to pay for their habits? (I don’t buy the movie’s explanation that it’s cheaper than hiring young women in the Philippines and other poor countries and bringing them to France with promises of jobs. Especially since no fathers of poor girls ever came after the bad guys.) and 2) who in hell would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 17-year-old girl in an auction to rich men? Not even when, as the auctioneer says, she speaks English, French, and other languages. A John is a John, no matter what price he antes up—he only cares if she gives French, not speak it. And what he gets in return is no different from what happens with a $10-whore in a Juarez whorehouse, or a $25 pickup off the streets of New Orleans.
Bottom line, I’d give Taken 3 out of 5 stars, because it’s honest in what it offers, kills a couple of hours of spare time, and is much more entertaining than Righteous Kill because Neeson is more believable than Pachino. I’d recommend it even more highly to this forum because most of you really go for chase and kill films. See it and enjoy.
My biggest pleasure from the movie is the big advantage Neeson’s character gets over his bitchy ex-wife and whiney daughter at the end of the film. From then on, when either one starts crying over how he won’t let his daughter do things, his only necessary answer is, “Well, you thought the Paris trip was a great idea!”
The next day she and mom are browbeating Neeson to sign a consent form for her to go to Paris with a 17-year-old girlfriend. (At that point, I was wondering, “Who’s going to feed and care for the horse while she’s gone? Stepdad probably has a whole racing stable to do that, but has the brat even ridden the animal yet?) When dad hesitates, daughter bursts into tears and runs from restaurant.
In between those scenes, Neeson establishes his credentials as a really bad ex-CIA (or some government agency) with reflexes quicker than anyone his age could have as he beats the living crap out of some weirdo who tries to knife the young female singer he and some other ex-spook friends have been hired to provide security for at a concert. One might wonder how the attacker managed to get through all the other backstage security to get that close, but a bigger mystery to me was an earlier scene where the singer is doing voice exercises with her voice coach while preparing to go on stage. What rock star has ever had singing lessons??
Anyway, Neeson’s character is tough, but apparently not too smart because he buys his daughter’s story that two 17-year-olds are going to Paris to visit the museums and signs the consent form. Even at the last moment when he discovers they’re really planning to follow a U2 tour through Europe, he doesn’t jerk her lying butt back in the car and take her home. Parents today are just too permissive.
Instead, the girls get off the plane in Paris and immediately get picked up by an airport version of a lounge lizard who finds out where they’re staying. This info is then relayed to a gang of Bulgarians specializing in white slavery, who proceed to kidnap the two. Fortunately this happens while daughter is on the phone with dad. Had she been talking to her flakey materialistic mom, the story would end at that point, but Neeson hands down some fatherly advice to shout out descriptions of the kidnappers when they grab her so he’ll know who to hunt down later.
From that point on, with something like 96 hours before his daughter disappears forever into the white slavery system, there are plenty of copy-cat Bourne adventures as Neeson kicks butt all over Paris, with the usual allotment of karate chops, beatings, shootings, stabbings, garroting, and electrical torture. No danger of any spoilers. When Neeson says in the TV ad for the film, “I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I will kill you,” does anyone doubt what the outcome will be?
While this is going on, one is left to wonder about many other parts of the film. Like why do the bad guys kidnap the two girls from an upscale apartment amid loud music, screams and scuffling and no one sees two struggling people being carried off? This becomes even more mystifying when we learn later that the airport pick-up simply invited another girl to a party and delivered his already doped and until-then-willing victim to the white-slavers’ doorstep in a seedy part of town.
Another mystery: how desperate for a job would an English-Bulgarian interpreter have to be to wait on a traffic island in a seedy red-light district until a would-be employer drives up?
Also, why did the film-makers assume that the top ranks of the French police are as corrupt as a third-world constable? Why do they also think all prostitutes are young and good-looking? Age and appearance has nothing to do with whoring. I’ve seen arrest photos on the vice squad’s bulletin board that would turn your stomach, yet they’re still selling it to someone.
Another thing I wondered about was the scene of a whorehouse set up on a remote construction site, with workmen lined up to trade their euros for the number of a partitioned room where the prosties—drugged to a zombie-like state—are awaiting. Now I’ve done hard blue-collar labor in my younger years, but no one ever gave me a long enough lunch break for that sort of action. Besides, why would a worker bring a pocketful of money to work?
I also wondered during a close-quarter car chase through the muddy construction area why none of the following cars had any mud splattered on their windshields until the script called for one such muddy vehicle to crash into a piece of heavy equipment. Subsequent chases by foot and car on the streets of Paris also puzzled me—I’ve been to Paris, and everyone there drives like they’re fleeing from killers.
There were the usual shoot-out wonderments: How come the bad guys can spray the area with machine-guns and never hit the hero, while he picks them off with a pistol, the shortest-ranged and most inaccurate of all firearms? How can someone riddle the body of a car without the bullets punching through and killing those inside? And when they riddle the hero’s car, why are the motor and tires never damaged?
Later when Neeson is questioning a bad guy with the help of electric wires attached to the metal chair to which the villain is strapped, I couldn’t help but wonder if the ex-CIA daddy last used that method while interrogating suspected rebels in some banana-republic.
Neeson’s character also was wonderful at reviving virtually overnight girls who had been rendered almost comatose by drugs injected into them by the baddies. At least one is in better shape than he is by the end of the adventure.
I also wondered throughout the movie how much time Neeson and the other real actors actually spend on screen. With all the car chases and fights, you’re probably watching stunt men and doubles through most of the movie.
But the movie’s two biggest mysteries to me are 1) why are the bad guys kidnapping rich 17-year-olds when there are millions of female drug-addicts all over Europe who take up prostitution to pay for their habits? (I don’t buy the movie’s explanation that it’s cheaper than hiring young women in the Philippines and other poor countries and bringing them to France with promises of jobs. Especially since no fathers of poor girls ever came after the bad guys.) and 2) who in hell would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 17-year-old girl in an auction to rich men? Not even when, as the auctioneer says, she speaks English, French, and other languages. A John is a John, no matter what price he antes up—he only cares if she gives French, not speak it. And what he gets in return is no different from what happens with a $10-whore in a Juarez whorehouse, or a $25 pickup off the streets of New Orleans.
Bottom line, I’d give Taken 3 out of 5 stars, because it’s honest in what it offers, kills a couple of hours of spare time, and is much more entertaining than Righteous Kill because Neeson is more believable than Pachino. I’d recommend it even more highly to this forum because most of you really go for chase and kill films. See it and enjoy.
My biggest pleasure from the movie is the big advantage Neeson’s character gets over his bitchy ex-wife and whiney daughter at the end of the film. From then on, when either one starts crying over how he won’t let his daughter do things, his only necessary answer is, “Well, you thought the Paris trip was a great idea!”
Last edited by rufnek; 03-12-09 at 06:11 PM.
Just kidding! As Sedai said, great read!
That's the spirit! Hold out for the hard cover!
