A word of caution to any teenage girls planning to spend their summer vacations in Europe: Do not let your parents anywhere near Taken or risk being locked in your room with no hope of parole until you're 35.
A parent's worst nightmare writ large in flashing neon letters, Taken centers on the abduction of two 17-year-old American tourists, Kim (Maggie Grace) and Amanda (Katie Cassidy), mere hours after arriving in Paris for what was supposed to be a month-long trek following U2 around on tour through Europe.
Fortunately, Kim's father Bryan (Liam Neeson) happens to be a retired ex-CIA agent, one badass enough to take on Jason Bourne and James Bond and make them cower and beg for mercy - at the same time. Bryan, whose previous devotion to his career cost him his wife (Famke Janssen, bristling with bitter resentment) and daughter, was trying to make up for lost time when he reluctantly consented to allow Kim to jet overseas, despite his apprehensions. "Mom says your job made you paranoid," Kim tells him as he drives her to the airport. "My job made me aware," he replies.
So he's not at all surprised when the worst happens, and he immediately pounces into rescue mode, as if he had been expecting it all along. Director Pierre Morel (District B-13) paces Taken with the same brisk efficiency and ruthlessness Bryan uses to find his daughter (the movie clocks in at a quick 87 minutes, minus end credits), so even though the film is pure formula, there isn't a single moment in it when you start growing impatient.
Even the obligatory exposition at the start of the picture breezes by, because Neeson (unlike, say, Harrison Ford, who would have probably starred in this movie 10 years ago) is as good of a dramatic actor as he is a kick-butt action hero. It's almost as much fun watching Neeson and Janssen trading barbed-wire jabs as it is seeing Neeson wreak great and painful havoc on the men who have kidnapped his daughter. Almost.
Those men come from practically every country in Europe: Taken is an equal-opportunity offender when it comes to caricatures of sleazy, villainous foreigners, including, of course, the French, who come off all high and mighty but turn out to be the lowest of all.
Such developments are all in the spirit of the rousing B-picture Taken is at heart. It excels at making you feel really good when the bad guys get theirs, which happens constantly after the first 20 minutes. Like any half-decent thriller involving CIA superagents should, Taken also teaches you a couple of tricks that will come in handy if you should find yourself in a similar situation (including how to avoid being located via satellite while using a cellphone to taunt the authorities).
Neeson's estimable presence adds a level of class to what could have easily degenerated into a mere Death Wish knock-off. This is still a Death Wish knock-off, but it's a lot better acted than any of Charles Bronson's pictures. And hearing him spout lines like "I can have 30 agents here before you have time to scratch your worthless balls" is a lot more fun than having Jean Claude Van Damme recite the same dialogue. Neeson's an actor, you know?
Taken is nonsense, but it's terrifically entertaining nonsense, especially in the midst of the January movie doldrums. It provides the reckless thrills that Quantum of Solace lacked. It also offers further refinement on a lesson an old TV sitcom once taught us: When it comes to rescuing kids from multinational human trafficking rings, father really does know best.
Analysis of this morning's Oscar nominations: Surprises, snubs and oddities
How, for example, could The Curious Case of Benjamin Button score a whopping 13 nominations (just one short of the record shared by Titanic and All About Eve) but not include Cate Blanchett, whose performance in the film was arguably more important to the drama than Brad Pitt's leading turn?
But the rest of The Dark Knight's nominations were in technical categories: No Best Picture, Director or Screenplay recognition. The same went for Pixar's magnificent Wall*E, the guaranteed winner of the Best Animated Feature award, which at least managed to snag a Best Original Screenplay nod among its six nominations.
But Wall*E, too, was shut out of the Best Picture and Director races, replaced instead by Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon and Stephen Daldry's The Reader, two middling, Oscar-baiting dramas that landed five nominations apiece - and were driven primarily by Hollywood's desire to congratulate itself on making serious, "important" movies.
Richard Jenkins' Best Actor nomination for The Visitor was, like the Frozen River recognitions, a testament that Oscar voters are still willing to pay attention to small pictures made outside the behemoth studio machinery. But Jenkins' well-deserved nod knocked out of the race Clint Eastwood, whose swan song performance in Gran Torino deserved to have been commemorated by the Academy.
Gran Torino was completely shut out of the Oscars, although the Eastwood-directed Changeling fared better, scoring three nominations including Best Actress for Angelina Jolie and an Art Direction nod for its superb 1920s period setting.
Slumdog Millionaire's 10 nominations should help keep that movie chugging along on its path to mainstream-hit status. The film is also, at this moment, apparently the movie to beat for Best Picture. But how to explain the two Best Song nominations it received (for Jai Ho and O Saya), while Bruce Springsteen's moody, melancholy tune for The Wrestler got nada?
Rachel Getting Married's Anne Hathaway received a Best Actress nomination for her portrayal of a recovering addict wreaking havoc on her sister's wedding, but hers was the sole nomination in a film that was carried by an ensemble. Same went with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, whose Penelope Cruz got a Supporting Actress nod, but deserving co-stars Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall got zilch.
Perhaps the most surprising nomination of the day was the Best Supporting Actor mention for Tropic Thunder's Robert Downey Jr. Although his performance in the film as a Method actor who alters his skin pigmentation in order to play a black man was admittedly brilliant, it isn't the kind of thing the Oscars usually pay attention to. Downey's success in Iron Man probably played a big part in bringing him the nomination, since between the two movies, the actor cemented his Hollywood comeback in a major way.
But Iron Man was a comic-book movie, so Academy members opted to celebrate Tropic Thunder instead, because we know how Oscar voters feel about superheroes. Just ask the makers of The Dark Knight.
January 22, 2009 in Commentary, News, Oscars | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)