Daily Archives: February 19, 2009

Taken and Torture

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During the movie Taken, one of my friends had a strong negative reaction to the torture sequence. Not because it was graphic, or even disturbing. He had a political reaction. Afterwards he said he nearly walked out because “torture never works”. My other friends thought it odd that he picked out that element. After all, hiding behind a couch to avoid bullets never works, either. Other things that never work:

  • Driving through a hail of bullets hoping the thin metal of your car will protect you.
  • Finding conveniently placed explosive barrels to help cover your escape.
  • Taking on a guy with a handgun using your super-duper fire extinguisher.
  • Recognizing a voice you heard over an international line, based on two words.
  • Shooting a middle-aged woman in the arm and saying “it’s just a flesh wound”.  Could be, could hit an artery.

But none of these things upset my friend.  He’s against the torture.  I went back and forth.  I’m also against torture, and also believe that it rarely gives reliable intelligence.  In fact, I don’t like the show, 24, in part because they constantly use torture to advance the plot in a way that seems to validate it as an intelligence gathering tool.

On the other hand, it’s just a movie.  We allow ourselves to enjoy movie protagonists who commit every kind of heinous act.  Torture doesn’t stand out over, say, murder, genocide, drug-dealing, or vampirism.  I thought people who got upset about the “torture quests” in WOTLK were idiots.  Still do.  So why shouldn’t this be the same?  I think that, had they really established the character they were shooting for, the father so blinded by rage and love for his daughter that he considers nothing else, it might have worked.  But in this case, Liam Neeson’s character never rises above a sort of everyman with talents.  So we don’t really separate his morals from our own.  So his choices are those of someone who we consider “moral”.

I do think my friend was being ridiculous, but I get just as ridiculous over other things, especially the off-screen hiding spot.  The hero walks into a room, looks around, and is suddenly jumped by a bad buy who was hiding off-camera.  It’s a good hiding place, because WE CAN’T SEE THEM.  The hero, though, shouldn’t be limited by the camera frame.  Liam Neeson does this once, walking out into a hall, apparently without noticing the bad guys, who then knock him out.  So they can hang him from a pipe.  This trope drives me crazy.  I haven’t walked out, yet, but then I’d have to explain and people would probably say “it’s just a movie.”

Not so Taken

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Last night I saw Taken with three guy friends. A fourth joined us for dinner, but bailed before the movie started. Something about having to work on President’s Day. Whiner. Anyway, preconception was that it would be a quality action movie. After all, Liam Neeson?
neeson.jpg

But 30 minutes in, I turned to one friend and said: “Did we accidentally walk into ‘He’s not that into you?’” Because, up to that point, the movie was trying to establish characters and relationships, none of which were deeper than the shallowest made-for-tv emotion-fest. Actually, most of those are probably better. Liam Neeson plays a retired agent (CIA?) who LOVES his daughter. But DOESN’T understand her. His ex-wife left him BECAUSE HE PUT HIS COUNTRY FIRST. And she married a nicer, wealthier man who can give his daughter a horse for her birthday. If these people had ever seen a single “we separated because you did your duty” scene in any other movie, they should have just referenced it. Instead, they sort of walked through the stock quotes and stock feelings, piling cliche’ onto cliche’. And, while action movies are often cliche’-ridden, there were way to many relationship cliche’s and no action cliche’s. We get plenty of those later, of course, but why wait?

If the movie had achieved any kind of depth or quality, then a long build-up wouldn’t bother me. But sitting through tired scenes from old cop movies wasn’t building, it was just delaying.

Liam Neeson can never be entirely bad. But he tried so hard to be the clueless dad that he almost comes across as stupid. Then he goes nuts and destroys Paris, which was okay. But the over-the-top action could have been done just as well in a Vin Diesel movie. When you put better actors in place, you expect things to make more sense. Bullets are supposed to hit things, possibly even go through a couch, or car door, as they would in real life. But no, the action direction here is competent, but from the bullets-hit-everything-but-the-hero school.

Then there’s the utter lack of originality. Hang guy from pipe, guy breaks pipe. Of course pipe is filled with steam. I can’t recall one scene that I haven’t seen somewhere else.  Unlike, say, Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, in which almost every scene was both stupid and original.  There’s something to be said for that.

This movie is mildly defensible, I suppose.  It goes through the summer fun roller-coaster fairly quickly, after that long first 30 minutes.  But it’s a waste of Liam Neeson.