Having rescued several members of his family, fought off wolves and gotten embroiled in epic public transport outings, it was only a matter of time before Liam Neeson faced his ultimate adversary: frozen water. A decade on from helming Kill the Irishman, director Jonathan Hensleigh teams up with the Irishman who doesn’t seem capable of being killed.
Following an explosion at a remote mine in Manitoba, 26 miners are trapped and in need of rescue. After being fired from a trucking job, Mike (Neeson) and his PTSD suffering brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas) volunteer for the mission to deliver the wellheads needed to get the miners out. Necessitating a trip along deadly ice roads, their efforts are stymied by actuary Varnay (Benjamin Walker) and the corporate forces he works for.
The premise, which sits somewhere in the comfortable middle ground between Wages of Fear and Speed, is simplicity itself. Following a brief period of getting the Dirty Dozen together (or in this case, the filthy four), it’s a straight non-stop bull run to their final destination. Of course, it isn’t long before the first of several accidents occurs, as anybody who has watched any of the 11 seasons of Ice Road Truckers could attest.
While Hensleigh gives cinematographer Tom Stern (a regular collaborator with Clint Eastwood) some breathing room at the start, providing audiences with some genuinely breathtaking shots of the area in and around Manitoba, once the action starts there’s little stopping it. From tipping trucks to frozen falls, Neeson’s Mike “takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” (that’s a direct quote) as it all builds to a fist fight in the snow. At its apex, the old chestnut of a crumbling bridge is juxtaposed with a clash of masculinity in the snow, and it’s literally the whitest thing you’ll see on screen this year.
Neeson takes it all in his stride, quipping his way through the very particular set of screen skills he’s confining himself to these days. While Laurence Fishburne is criminally underused, and Marcus Thomas’s aphasia afflicted character is a wee bit problematic, props need to go to the casting of Amber Midthunder (Legion, Hell or High Water) as a deceptively tough trucker who goes the distance.
THE ICE ROAD might feel like a film that’s been assembled from component parts, and previous used ones at that, but it ultimately comes together in a pleasing way. Like the titular ice roads, it’s in constant danger of careening off the side but somehow manages to stay on the straight and narrow and deliver its goods on time and under budget.
2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jonathan Hensleigh | WRITER: Jonathan Hensleigh | CAST: Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany, Marcus Thomas, Amber Midthunder, Benjamin Walker | DISTRIBUTOR: Rialto Distribution | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 August 2021 (AUS)
The fourth film in the Men in Black franchise had a strange journey to the screen. A few years ago, Sony was hacked and it was revealed that a crossover between MIB and the 21 Jump Street franchise was planned. While that was scrapped, the Thor: Ragnarok duo of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson slip into the black suits for a global outing.
Atop the Eiffel Tower in 2016, Agents H (Chris Hemsworth) and T (Liam Neeson) fight off the Hive to save the world. 20 years earlier, young Molly witnesses an incident that will lead her to obsessive pursue recruitment by the MIB as an adult (Tessa Thomspon). She achieves her goal, but the H she encounters is a cocky shell of his former self.
MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL doesn’t stray too far from the formula, pairing a rookie with a veteran to uncover a hidden secret within MIB itself. Screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (best known for Iron Man and Transformers: The Last Knight) are interested in the chaos of the franchise, pinging from London, to Marrakesh, Naples, and back to Paris.
Undoubtedly one of the biggest appeals of this chapter is the wonderful team-up of Hemsworth and Thompson, fresh from being Asgardians of the galaxy in the MCU. At the film’s best, the self-aware verbal sparring and mismatched buddy comedy works well. The addition of a small digital friend in Pawny (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) adds a fun dynamic, although the character won’t be for all tastes.
On the other hand, there isn’t a villain as strong as Vincent D’Onofrio’s cockroach in the first film, which is perhaps the weakest link in the movie. There’s the element changing Twins (played by French performers Laurent and Larry Bourgeois a.k.a. Les Twins), who silently rip up cities and send the heroes running. When the overarching villain is revealed late in the third act, it should come as no surprise to anybody who has seen a film in the last few decades. (Hint: just look at the cast list).
Where MIB continues to shine is in the effect department, building on the canonical aesthetic and updating the future tech for modern palates. The Twins have some neat effects of morphing the environment around them, although no effect seems to have been able to deal with a poor choice in wigs for Rebecca Ferguson.
While MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL may not be as fresh or engaging as the original, it has enough consistently fun moments to tip it over the rankings past Men in Black 3. The denouement wraps things up a little too neatly but paves the way for a sequel, and despite any minor quibbles with the formula, it would still be great to see this team back in black.
2019 | US | DIR: F. Gary Gray | WRITER: Art Marcum and Matt Holloway | CAST: Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Rebecca Ferguson, Kumail Nanjiani, Rafe Spall, Laurent Bourgeois, Larry Bourgeois, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 June 2019 (AUS)
Monsters have long been used as stand-ins for the basest of fears and emotional issues. King Kong was a representation of otherness. Godzilla was a reaction to the devastation of bombs dropped on Japan. Earlier this year, Colossal filtered alcoholism and abuse through the lens of giant monsters. In this tradition, A MONSTER CALLS is about the inner world of a child in a state of denial.
Based on the children’s novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, it follows Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) who is dealing with quite a bit. His mother (Felicity Jones) is in the end stages of terminal cancer, he is bullied at school, and his strict grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) makes his life difficult. Visited in the night by a tree-like Monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), he is promised three stories. When the Monster is done, Conor must tell his own story and deal with his “truth.”
“Stories are wild creatures,” advises the Monster. “When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they may wreak.” If you take this together with the old adage about our personal histories simply being the stories we tell ourselves, then A MONSTER CALLS is a modern fable about a boy on a the cusp of manhood who must confront his own authorship far too soon. On a more base level, it’s about the monster that denial can be, and how our internal demons and impact others.
What is surprising about the telling is just how matter-of-fact it all is, structuring the narrative around three central stories. Conor’s waking hours are mundane, save for his bullying, a stark contrast with his vivid imagination. It’s a rare youth-oriented piece that shows us the realities of death and dying, as a “boy…too young to be a man” gets glimpses of an increasingly frail Jones, or is asked to make cups of tea while his mother and grandmother argue in the other room.
That said, director J. A. Bayona (the upcoming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) makes the most of the gorgeous watercolour/CG blended animation in the story sequences. Mostly narrated by Neeson’s distinctive brogue, the pieces tell the tales of old kings and apothecary, while a third more clearly connects to Conor’s anger over being made invisible. The impact on the ‘real’ world is the “remarkably pitiful” destruction of some of his grandma’s property.
Just like The Neverending Story, the ultimate power behind A MONSTER CALLS is in giving voice to the unnameable. Conor naming the real reasons for his fear and anger is a devastating moment that smacks of authenticity. No matter the age of the audience member, this is one monster that as many people as possible should face.
The weight of Catholicism, or at least the notion of faith more broadly, has always driven the films of Martin Scorsese. Ejected from a seminary as a young man, his struggles with faith are seen as early as the Catholic guilt of Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), the Christ-like martyr of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980) and the genuine article in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). SILENCE is a continuation of this highly personal dialogue, filtered through the weight of doubt that burdens almost everyone on screen.
In an incredibly faithful adaptation of the novel by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, writers Jay Cocks and Scorsese’s script begins with word that Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), a Portuguese priest in Japan, has apostatized. The unwavering faith of Fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) leads them to Japan, where Christianity has been banned under penalty of torture and execution. Their journey leads Rodrigues in particular to question his purpose, as the perceived silence of his god begins challenging his faith and questioning his moral centre.
When you step out of the main train station in modern Nagasaki, there is a monument to the 26 martyred saints of Japan. The silent modern art piece is underpinned by a legacy of Christian persecution in the country, although these days is somewhat subdued by the memorial to the city’s atomic destruction that occurred within living memory. Scorsese’s remarkable achievement in SILENCE is not only capturing the spirit of Endō’s work, but in bottling that whole history into a single (albeit lengthy) film.
Interestingly enough, it is the length of the piece that conveys much of Endō’s meaning with an appropriately silent level of visual storytelling, something the more compressed 1971 Masahiro Shinoda film failed to achieve. (Indeed, Endō was never satisfied with this earlier adaptation of his work). Written as an epistolary novel, the film’s reverential power comes in Grafield’s narrative voice over, and even through some unnecessary laboured accents both Garfield and Driver exemplify this inner turmoil. Yosuke Kubozuka is ideal as Kicihijiro, the Judas representative for Rodrigues’ perceived Christlike trials. Kichijiro is a source of unlikely humour as well, and his constant pleas for confession constrast with Rodrigues’ inner struggle. The crucial climax of the film, one that gets to the heart of the exploration of faith versus doubt, works because of the long takes that are filled with a mixture of contemplation and breathtaking Rodrigo Prieto photography.
There are few films still being made in the vein of SILENCE, a truly spiritual exploration that doesn’t require the audience to share the doctrine. Unlike more literal Christ stories, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Scorsese and Endō’s narrative doesn’t so much burden the viewer with Catholic guilt as deliver a testament to its endurance. Scorsese’s passion project may have been in development for almost thirty years, but it is unquestionably his most powerful crafted piece in the last two decades.
[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2016 | US | DIR: Martin Scorsese | WRITER: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese (Based on the novel by Shūsaku Endō) | CAST: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán Hinds, Liam Neeson | DISTRIBUTOR: Transmission Films | RUNNING TIME: 161 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 February 2017 (AUS) [/stextbox]
Seth MacFarlane‘s suite of irreverent animated TV comedies are often a love ’em or hate ’em prospect, with his trademark barrage of non sequitur‘s treading the fine line between humour and the just plain strange. With 2011’s Ted, MacFarlane took his successful formula and transplanted it to the big screen, in a mostly live-action original creation that sometimes stretched the gag of a very naughty bear out over a feature length episode. Learning from that experience, A Million Ways to Die in the West focuses more on narrative, but not at the expense of the expected gags.
Mostly written as a showcase for MacFarlane, the co-writer/director is Albert Stark, a sheep farmer who seems completely out of time and place in Arizona, 1882. After talking his way out of a gun duel, he loses the love of his life Louise (Amanda Seyfried) to Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), the purveyor of fine products at the local moustachery. Hurt and confused by his sudden rejection, Albert soon meets Anna (Charlize Theron), a woman who seems to share his sensibilities and encourages him to develop his confidence, and his gunplay. Yet her husband is the famed gunslinger Clinch (Liam Neeson), and he’s none too happy about Albert laying hands on his woman.
The very knowing script is partly a love-letter to Westerns, and so it’s less Blazing Saddles and more in keeping with the R-rated reference-based comedy that MacFarlane is best loved for. It does share the very modern sensibility of the Mel Brooks classic, and this is what makes A Million Ways to Die in the West so damned charming. Surrounded by people who accept death as an inevitability (“People die at the fair”), MacFarlane is less Peter Griffin and more Woody Allen, incredulous that nobody else can see the world through his anachronistic goggles. This results not only in some surrealist sight gags, including a blue jay being used to peck out a wound at the local doctor, but in a rapid-fire series of escalating one-liners and observations. As the title would imply, disaster is literally around every corner, and MacFarlane’s skill is not just in taking you off-guard but throwing in one last kick to destroy the line he’s just crossed.
At least half of the joy is in seeing an amazing assemblage of actors playing against type, or allowing themselves to be completely enveloped in it. MacFarlane and Theron play it straight, allowing for the over-the-top Neil Patrick Harris to chew his way through scenery. Even the size of Amanda Seyfried’s eyes don’t escape the wholesale assassination of sacred cows. Occasionally, it’s an uneasy fit, with MacFarlane’s penchant for pushing things that one step too far resulting in some incredibly base (but not entirely unwelcome) gags that cover the gamut of anal sex to the ol’ reliable diarrhoea-in-a-hat bit. The hapless shoemaker Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) doesn’t bat an eyelid at the increasingly detailed exploits of his girlfriend Ruth (Sarah Silverman), a prostitute. However, this one-note gag feels drawn-out over the course of the film, and is one of the many signs that the film could have benefited from a tighter edit.
Yet with a tonne of jokes delivered every minute, there are more hits than misses here. MacFarlane demonstrates an ability to move beyond the simple gag-based structure, showing real character growth and some sweet moments between Theron and MacFarlane in particular. Beneath all the humour, there’s a truthful core about self-belief and moving on from the people that are holding you back and treating you poorly. Peppered with cameos, including two from other modern spins on the western, it’s hard to not at least smile throughout.
Brushing up to the temptation to be just a giant ad for the world’s most famous toys, The LEGO Movie builds upon a solid foundation of comedy and…SPACESHIP!
[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”The LEGO Movie (2014)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]
LEGO might be the greatest thing ever. Based on a toy that takes its name from the Danish leg godt, which means “play well”, The LEGO Movie maintains this philosophy of bricolage. Writers and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller burst onto the scene in 2009 with the disarmingly funny Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and their follow-up 21 Jump Street was more side-splitty than it had any right to be. The duo maintains this same sense of irreverent madness with this latest property, a film that has no notion of what it means to work inside the box.
The evil Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell) has failed to unleash the Kragle, stopped only by the wizard Vitruvius (who else but Morgan Freeman?), who is blinded in the process. Vitruvius warns his nemesis of a prophecy, in which a “Special” will one day deliver the Piece of Resistance and put a stop to Lord Business’s plans once and for all. Years later, ordinary and obedient construction worker Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) is mistaken for the Special when he falls into a hole and becomes attached to the mythical Piece. Pursued by Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), Emmett is rescued by Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and they set out across the various bricked lands to save the day with the other Master Builders, unique minifigures who can construct anything out of the materials they have available.
The LEGO Movie is undoubtedly a large promotion for the company, showcasing a number of their products, even if its in a self-deprecating fashion (when referencing the Fabuland or non-system lines, for example). Yet like many of its animated contemporaries, it embraces a multi-generational audience, occasionally forgetting that children may be watching. After setting the rules of the universe, playing things by the instruction book as it were, Lord and Miller follow the spirit of their film and break them repeatedly. Once the film embraces the crazy, it’s a journey into every wacky mash-up that children of all ages have concocted on their lounge room floors. Batman and Star Wars characters interact as naturally as having robots in the Old West, and a journey to Cloud Cuckoo Land (in Middle Zealand, of course) is the kind of free-for-all that is filled with more cameos than a Muppet film.
The animation may not look like it, but the state-of-the-art approach gives modern computer generated imagery a retro feel. Initially aping the stilted stop-motion feel of brick films, animation supervisor Chris McKay soon takes us on an odyssey through a world that was built brick-by-brick. Seas are textured of individual bricks, constructs are made out of everyday items and glue is the natural enemy of the constructible. So convincing is this brick world, that when the film does take a sharp turn narratively, some audiences may be left feeling unsure as to whether it belongs in the same film.
The spirit of The LEGO Movie encourages adults and kids alike to think outside the box, and with the debut theatrical feature for the world’s favourite toy, Lord and Miller have done just that. It might spike LEGO sales around the world, but it will also embiggen your fun zones, brick your negativity and interlock your hearts.
If the original Taken created a screen action hero in Liam Neeson, then its sequel is about recapturing the magic in a bottle. When the first entry was released in 2008, it would be safe to say that nobody really saw it coming. The Oscar-winning actor became an overnight action sensation at the age of 56, taking out half of Europe’s underworld at a cracking pace in the process. The success of this role led directly to The A-Team (2010), the similarly plotted Unknown (2011) and this year’s surprisingly good The Grey. Yet Taken 2 fundamentally fails to understand the irony of its predecessor’s success, perpetuating the Neeson action status when the machine should be lining him up for The Expendables 3.
“The dead cry out to us for justice!” exclaims family head Murad (Rade Sherbedgia) as he mourns the loss of his son and the fellow clansmen killed by retired CIA man Bryan Mills (Neeson) in the first film. Mills takes some time off in Istanbul with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), but daddy-daughter-ex time doesn’t last too long when Murad’s gang snatches Mills and Lenore to do nasty vengeance things with them. Kim has managed to escape their clutches, and she must now run about an unfamiliar city as their only hope of rescue.
Taken pushed the boundaries of good sense in all the right ways, and remains a justifiably batty modern cult classic as a result. Yet Taken 2 throws all notion of logic out the window, writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen perhaps only remembering the ‘old man kicking ass’ elements of the initial outing. It would be easy to say that much of the problem lies in the character of Kim, who is for all intents and purposes a woman in her early 20s but behaves (and is treated) as a girl of 15. That much of her arc involves her running through the streets of Istanbul throwing live grenades, simply so that Mills can get a bearing on her location (!), only adds to the realisation that Taken 2 is a misguided venture from start to finish.
The unequivocal star of the genre has also been largely sidelined, with Neeson quite literally phoning in entire sequences from a basement. When he does finally spring back into action, it isn’t so much of a leap as a stumble, his six decades beginning to show in the more frenetic action sequences. The first entry could be characterised by its lightning speed, glossing over any plot deficiencies with pace and a pure adrenaline rush that we’ve come to expect from The Transporter‘s Besson and Pierre Morel. Yet director former graffiti artist Olivier Megaton (not his real name) fails to leave a distinctive mark on this entry, giving us enough time to not just stop and smell the gunpowder, but question its relevance as well.
If the first film can be accused of a thinly veiled racism, stereotyping Eastern Europeans and all of Albania for good measure, then the sequel dispenses with the veil, searches through its bags at the airport and holds it for questioning for an undisclosed period of time. The ‘other’ is very bad in this film, and despite the story of familial vengeance during the exposition, the enemy is a series of faceless and dispensable non-Caucasian cannon fodder. It doesn’t matter to Mills, as his politics are fairly straightforward: mow them all down before they can do any harm to his own people.
Given how disarmingly fun the first entry was, Taken 2 disappoints with its otherwise straightforward action flick. Perhaps it is the copycats that have poured out in the last few years, many of them starring Neeson, but the premise feels neither fresh nor entertaining. Indeed, it is insulting to the audience that made the first film a minor hit, throwing them the scraps that weren’t quite good enough to make the cut the first time around.
Taken 2 is released in Australia on 4 October 2012 from Fox.
A modern-day Deliverance, Joe Carnahan’s film The Grey is the latest entry into the genre of Survivalist Drama. Incorporating spectacular scenery and adrenalin-pumping action sequences, this is what the casual observer would identify as being a prime product of Hollywood high concept mainstream filmmaking. Scratch the surface though and evidence suggests that there is something different present.
An expert marksman with a rifle, John Ottway (Liam Neeson) is employed by an oil facility in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Ottway’s job is to protect the workers of the facility while working in the wild, but of more concern is that he is a loner with suicidal thoughts. At the end of his tenure, Ottway boards a plane with a team of workers to fly back to Anchorage. While passing through a storm there is an accident, and the plane crashes. Ottway is one of seven survivors of the plane disaster. While scouting the crash site he is attacked by a breed of wolf known as The Grey. Ottway soon realises that the plane has crashed into The Grey’s territorial hunting ground. He informs the surviving men of this dangerous situation and that they need to leave the crash site or they will be killed by the wolves. The survivors heed Ottway’s advice and reluctantly follow his lead. They begin their trek and head deep into the remote Alaskan wilderness, meanwhile the carnivorous wolves begin their hunt, and the remaining survivors are their prey.
Director Joe Carnahan, whose previous films include 2002’s Narc, 2006’s Smokin Aces, and more recently 2010’s The A Team, is well versed in genre filmmaking. With The Grey being his first foray into survivalist action he takes the viewing experience a step further that results in not only an exciting film, but arguably genre development. Once again teaming up with A-Team lead Liam Neeson, Carnahan surrounds his leading man with a strong supporting cast. Besides the ever reliable Neeson as John Ottway, present in the film are standout performances from Frank Grillo as Diaz, Dermont Mulroney as Talgat, and former L Word cast member Dallas Roberts as Hendrick.
Unlike other films of its kind, The Grey does not use its cast as fodder only for the pervading danger. It makes use of its characters to drive the emotional response of the viewer. While the wolves pursue the survivors, we learn pieces of information from each of the men increasing our concern, and producing an active involvement with the narrative of the film. This is one of the reasons The Grey is such refreshing experience. Set pieces are placed in the script as avenues for each one of these characters to bare his soul meanwhile allowing the viewers to reflect and think. Amongst the many examples of this we discover Diaz and Ottways shared atheism. We also sympathise with the longing of Talget’s pain as he fights to return to his daughter, and we observe humane principles that drive Hendrick in his actions. By the time the film finishes these characters become people.
In his decision to consciously engage the viewer with his film, Joe Carnahans’ The Grey addresses issues such as the role of masculinity, the impact of faith in people’s lives, and the strength driven from families. These are issues addressed amongst many others, as we are just scratching the surface of a multi-layered viewing experience. A high concept film on the surface it is what the viewer is prepared to input and give that makes the film such a rewarding experience. As with any film a viewer should dig deeper when the opportunity arises, and think about what is taking place and being said. Be prepared to invest in a film such as The Grey and that’s where the real awards are waiting.
The Grey has been identified as one of the most complex and rewarding films to be released in the last eighteen months. This is definitely a genre changer and by rights should become one of the sign posts of genre development in the history of film. This I know is a big call and whether it is rewarded in this way time will tell, but my view is that over time this will be a film that will be returned to and discussed such as Deliverance is today. Lifted from Ian Mackenzie Jeffers novella Ghost Walker, the author wrote the screenplay with director Joe Carnahan. While this is a high concept film, and an example of what draws people to the cinema today, the real reward is thinking about what you have seen long after the light has come on and the popcorn been left on the floor.
The Disc
This was reviewed on a Blu-ray test copy. There was no problems observed and the transfer was fine. The film is set in a very cold snow and ice environment with the colours used complementing these surroundings, for example Ottway wears a grey cream beanie and jacket. This was done deliberately to reflect the cold environment. A single disc with special features that include several brief features. These are The Extreme, Into the Fray and Man vs. Nature. A forewarning though, there is one last brief scene in the final films credits. Personally, if you are happy with the last scene presented when the film credits start to roll, that’s the time to finish the film because I thought this added scene spoiled a great ending.
Everybody’s got a story, and we all have our favourites and guilty pleasures. From the art-house to the bargain basement, movies impact us all in different ways. Judge not lest ye be judged. Here we hang out our Personal Bits. This week’s guest is ‘Bits regular Paul Grose.
Takenis a film directed by Pierre Morel, and derived from a screenplay by the writers of 2001’s The Transporters, Luc Besson, and Robert Mark Kamen. Made in 2008 Taken, is an interesting example of the effect that an actor’s screen persona can have on a film. With Takenseveral aesthetics come into play that shapes what takes place with the character, and on screen. The film stars Liam Neeson, who now appears to be modelled on a modern day Robert Mitchum.
Liam Neeson portrays divorced father Bryan Mills. A former CIA agent, he is attempting to rebuild a relationship with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). We learn that he has given up his career in order to attempt this reconciliation, which has cost him his marriage. Frustratingly Bryan’s attempts at forming a relationship with his daughter are made difficult by his uncooperative ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy new husband Stuart (Xander Berkeley). These two spoil and indulge Kim in all her desires. One such grant is a trip to Paris. Tragedy strikes on this holiday when Kim is kidnaped by an Albanian gang of human traffickers. Bryan, infatuated with his daughter’s safety at all times, swears to Lenore and Stuart that he will rescue his daughter from the kidnappers. Bryan learns that he has a limited time to do this before she disappears forever. With time running out, Bryan delves into the Paris underworld.
Fast-paced and filled with action, Takenis built around the Neeson persona. Liam Neeson first came to prominence by playing strong supporting character roles. He was Churchill, the doomed sailor to Mel Gibson’s’ Mr Christian in 1984’s The Bounty, and Sir Gawain in 1981’s Excalibur. Look carefully and you will also see him in 1986’s The Mission, and 1987’s A Prayer for The Dying. When Taken arrived, Liam Neeson had built himself a solid career out of lead and supporting roles. Ironically his supporting role work still forms a large part of his cannon and produces some of his most successful roles such as Qui-Gon Jinn in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, and Ducard in 2005’s Batman Begins. Yet Takenis his film and its narrative swiftly moves forward around set pieces including chases and fight scenes. The fight sequences are very interesting, and the reason for this is as a direct result of Neeson himself.
In Taken, Nesson incorporates his body frame and build to be used in the films narrative. A tall man at 6 ft. 4, and weighing 195 pounds, director Morel inserts Nessons character into positions and situations where his body frame plays a vital role. A lot of the fight scenes take place in small confined areas. Mills is seen climbing along thin ledges with dangerous drops, and crawling into confined spaces. While in several chase set pieces it is obvious that, because of his build, Mills has a problem running. He is repeatedly seen to struggle as he pursues his prey on foot. Cleverly though, in opposition to these restrictions, some of the greatest tension is produced when Mills enters a room, usually a small space where he fills the room with apprehension. Two fine examples of this change of the environment are the confrontation with Victor in the sales booth, and with Marko in the apartment kitchen.
Still working in conjunction with the Neeson persona, the dialogue is also used to great effect within the film. Again, this is structured to fit with the audience’s identification with the actor rather than the character. Neeson is slowly becoming as synonymous with his movie quotes as much as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Takenhas his most famous dialogue to date. Used for the promotion of the film the line “If you let her go now, that will be the end of it. If you don’t let my daughter go… I will find you, and I will kill you” has become a staple of popular culture. This tradition continues today with other great quotes coming from his latest film The Grey (2011).
If you have not seen it, Takenis certainly a guilty pleasure, but it is also controversial, and this has in the past been identified as a result of director Morel. Previously critics and several sources have identified Morel as a root of a racist agenda in his portrayal of stereotyping of Eastern Europeans. There is no doubt about this in Taken, as the Albanians are in no way portrayed in a pleasant light, and are identified in the film as at being at the centre of the human trafficking of individuals in Paris. Yet one of the primary villains of the piece is Saint Clair – an English man. So that aspect is open to debate, and as I have not seen any of his other films am not in a position to comment.
With a sequel set for release in the near future, Takenshows how outside aesthetics influence what we seen on the screen. In this case, it’s an actor’s screen persona and its relationship with the film going public, and also a director’s conscious decisions to insert both physical and mental agendas into a finished product. It is interesting to read these aspects into Taken, and adds a further layer to a great viewing experience.
Got your own Personal Bits? If you want to write about your favourite film, please let us know! We will feature a new one every week!
The first Taken, back in 2008, proved that Liam Neeson had a very particular set of skills; skills he had acquired over a very long career. That career seemed to involve killing most of Europe, so now he’s back to do what he does best in Turkey. Yahoo! Movies has the latest international trailer for what looks to be more of the same in Taken 2, and we couldn’t be happier.
Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, the retired CIA agent with a “particular set of skills” who stopped at nothing to save his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from kidnappers. When the father of one of the villains Bryan killed swears revenge, and takes Bryan and his wife (Famke Janssen) hostage in Istanbul, Bryan enlists Kim to help them escape. Bryan then employs his unique tactics to get his family to safety and systematically take out the kidnappers, one by one.
Taken 2 is released in Australia on 4 October 2012 from Fox.
