Very effective chase thriller about an ex-CIA operative (Liam Neeson) going after Albanian pimps who have kidnapped his daughter. As Roger Ebert correctly points out, our hero is "a one-man rescue squad, a master of every skill, a laser-eyed, sharpshooting, pursuit-driving, pocket-picking, impersonating, knife-fighting, torturing, karate-fighting killing machine who can cleverly turn over a petrol tank with one pass in his car and strategically ignite it with another (...) It's the set-up for a completely unbelievable action picture where Mills is given the opportunity to use one element of CIA spycraft after another, read his enemies' minds, eavesdrop on their telephones, spy on their meetings and, when necessary, defeat roomfuls of them in armed combat." But what Eberts fails to notice is that the film is also racist like hell, and it takes a neocon like John Podhoretz in the "Weekly Standard" to be outraged that the film's villains "are not just white slavers, not just bad guys, not just slave-keepers. They're Muslims. (...) It's about an American who goes to rescue his innocent daughter, slaughters dozens of evil Muslims in the process, and doesn't give it a second's thought. Taken is a 9/11 revenge fantasy, even if audiences don't quite know it, and its success reveals that even now, more than eight years after the attacks, a somewhat well-wrought version of such a fantasy has the power to seize the American imagination." All this is true, of course, but it must also be pointed out that Taken is a major disappointement because, despite its subject matter, is has no nudes scenes at all. And that's even worse than being "completely unbelievable" and racist.
February 2, 2009
Taken (2009) **
Very effective chase thriller about an ex-CIA operative (Liam Neeson) going after Albanian pimps who have kidnapped his daughter. As Roger Ebert correctly points out, our hero is "a one-man rescue squad, a master of every skill, a laser-eyed, sharpshooting, pursuit-driving, pocket-picking, impersonating, knife-fighting, torturing, karate-fighting killing machine who can cleverly turn over a petrol tank with one pass in his car and strategically ignite it with another (...) It's the set-up for a completely unbelievable action picture where Mills is given the opportunity to use one element of CIA spycraft after another, read his enemies' minds, eavesdrop on their telephones, spy on their meetings and, when necessary, defeat roomfuls of them in armed combat." But what Eberts fails to notice is that the film is also racist like hell, and it takes a neocon like John Podhoretz in the "Weekly Standard" to be outraged that the film's villains "are not just white slavers, not just bad guys, not just slave-keepers. They're Muslims. (...) It's about an American who goes to rescue his innocent daughter, slaughters dozens of evil Muslims in the process, and doesn't give it a second's thought. Taken is a 9/11 revenge fantasy, even if audiences don't quite know it, and its success reveals that even now, more than eight years after the attacks, a somewhat well-wrought version of such a fantasy has the power to seize the American imagination." All this is true, of course, but it must also be pointed out that Taken is a major disappointement because, despite its subject matter, is has no nudes scenes at all. And that's even worse than being "completely unbelievable" and racist.
