Hello Everyone :-)
Question: When did Liam Neeson become such a
badass? Answer: When ‘Taken’ happened. I think it’s safe to say that ‘Taken’
came as a bit of a surprise to everyone. It was a sleeper hit, spread mainly by
word of mouth; a decent, gritty, exploitation B-movie that re-invented Neeson
as an action star virtually overnight.
The trouble is that in today’s cinematic climate no
one can leave anything as a successful one-off, everything has to have a
sequel. Enter the hilariously named Olivier Megaton. Megaton is the Director of
‘Taken 2’ which I went to see a few weeks ago.
Now doing contract security work, Bryan Mills (Liam
Neeson) is learning to accept that his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is growing
up and is going through all the things teenagers do like learning to drive and
getting a Boyfriend. When picking Kim up for a driving lesson Bryan finds his
ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) has had an argument with her husband and as a way
to cheer her and Kim up he invites them to meet him out in Turkey where he will
be working the following week. The three meet up in Istanbul but it soon
transpires that some men are plotting against Bryan and he and his family and
may be in danger.
If it’s not been made clear over the course of this
blog so far, let me declare it in the most unequivocal way possible; I love cinema.
I love watching trailers, I love
deciding what films to see, I love buying my ticket, I love getting my Ben and
Jerry’s (I always have 3 scoops of Cookie Dough Ice cream when I go to the
pictures), nothing makes me happier. All this cinema related joy makes me an
eternal optimist; I go into a film expecting the best. You can therefore
imagine what a crushing disappointment it is to me when the film in question
turns out to be as appallingly bad as ‘Taken 2’.
The plot is tracing-paper thin and totally devoid
of excitement. The most galling thing is when it does have an interesting idea (which are few and VERY far between)
it throws it away. Take, for instance, a scene where Bryan has been ‘taken’ (a
word that is thrown around in this film far too liberally for my liking), he
calls Kim and gives her some instructions so he can work out where he is being
held captive. That is a really interesting idea; that Bryan has to instruct Kim
in order for her to find and free him. They could have run with that idea and
made Kim the gun-toting rescuer, flipping the Father/Daughter dynamic on its
head but instead they cop out and do a piss poor chase around the roofs of
Istanbul before Bryan comes and saves her. So unbelievably BORING! I have never
fallen asleep the cinema but halfway into ‘Taken 2’ I was getting a wobbly
head and had to be sharply elbowed by my friend to keep me awake.
I think the rating is part of the problem. One of
the things that made ‘Taken’ so enjoyable was the mad violence that took the
film up to its totally appropriate 15 rating. Blockbusters are so often filled
with dull CGI action that when you get something like ‘Taken’ that has an
insane amount of gritty, realistic brutality, it’s actually quite fun. ‘Taken
2’ has had all the violence toned down so it can achieve a 12A rating and in
doing so has made the film completely beige. It’s been demonstrated that a 12A
film can be brutal; ‘The Hunger Games’, for example, is a 12A with as much
vicious-clout as a higher rated film. The difference between that and ‘Taken 2’
is that ‘The Hunger Games’ was well edited whereas this looks like an appalling
hack-job.
Not just the violence itself but the feel of the
fight scenes is disappointing; they’re dull. The final fight between Bryan and
one of the Albanian cronies takes place in a Turkish bath house. What is
supposed to come across as a tense, brutal showdown actually turns out to be a
damp-squib of a fight between Neeson and a short, fat Albanian.
The cast try their best but they can’t lift this
dull lump of a movie.
There’s quite a sweet story that starts to play out
before anyone gets ‘taken’, where Kim is trying to get her Mum and Dad back
together. In these scenes Janssen is quite good but that’s all the character
development she’s afforded before someone puts a bag over her head and ties her
to some metal piping for the remainder of the film.
Likewise Grace has the scene where she has to be
Bryan’s eyes and ears and help him work out where he is in Istanbul when he
gets kidnapped. After a paint-by-numbers car chase Kim is packed off to the
American embassy not to be seen or heard from until the film’s conclusion.
Neeson makes a debonair killer and at 6”4 he is
undeniably physically imposing but his talents aren’t pushed much further than
demonstrating his ability to shoot a gun from the window of a moving car. He
really convinced in ‘Taken’, it felt like he really was a Father on the edge. He
never gets near that level of conviction in ‘Taken 2’ and has the look of a
man who is only doing this for the paycheque.
Even if you don’t give a hoot about plot or
narrative or things like that; even if all you want from a film is exciting
action set pieces, trust me, you will come away from ‘Taken 2’disappointed. It
smacks of a film made as a result of a financial spreadsheet and something with
that kind of origin rarely turns out to be any good. If you liked ‘Taken’ and
want to spend more time with those characters just buy it on DVD. Please don’t
go and see this mind-numbingly dull film.
Well after that bitter taste of disappointment I
desperately need some…
Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. OMG Les Misérables Official Trailer! My lovely Twitter-friend (Twiend?) Mike had the privilege of seeing this trailer when he
went to see ‘Skyfall’ (my blog post about which is on the way) and I was super
jealous because it wasn’t shown at my screening. Since then it’s been put up
online and Mike was good enough to send me the link. It looks so good! I’m excited :-)
2. Any of you that see my Twitter
feed will already know but last week I watched‘Game of Thrones’ series 1 for
the first time.
The ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ books are fantastic; what Harry
Potter was to me as a Teenager, these are to me as an adult. The TV adaptation is so
wonderful I cannot begin to tell you, everything is how I imagined it, the
opening titles are amazing, the music is fantastic; I just love it.
Anyway, I’m yet to see series 2 due to the fact I
don’t have Sky but I have been looking at the new cast members for series 3! Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr... INSPIRED!
That’s all I’ve got for you today!
Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
No comments:
Post a Comment