TAK3N (aka Taken 3)

Mills And Boom

TAK3N (aka Taken 3)
2014  France
Directed by Olivier Megaton 
UK cinema release print.

Liam Neeson explodes back on the screen as Bryan Mills...

Unfortunately.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Liam Neeson, I think he’s a great actor and, funnily enough, I also loved the first Taken movie... otherwise I wouldn’t have subjected myself to seeing the third installment in the franchise. I love producer Luc Besson too, of course, and as for Olivier Megaton... well, I liked Transporter 3 and Columbiana (reviewed here).

That being said, while not a complete disaster, Taken 2 (reviewed here) had some big shoes to fill and it was not the greatest sequel, by any stretch. I think the problem with the franchise, in terms of my expectations of it, is that it opened so strongly. Asides from his more swashbuckling role in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (reviewed here), Taken was pretty much the first time we’d seen Liam neeson play a “hard as nails” action hero and he did so credibly in a film which made good on the promise of its trailer. Neeson is always believable at the very least, of course, but the script in the first one was very strong for the kind of movie it was and, alas, neither Taken 2 or Taken 3 live up to it, to be fair.

This one starts off by setting up the majority of the bad guys by showing them doing some nasty stuff at the start of the film... which is pretty standard and almost a basic requirement of a movie like this. However, it has to be said that the drastic things they do at this point really don’t help the credibility of the rest of the storyline. The absolute seeming lack of interest by the police in terms of the impact of this opening on the rest of the story (aka, the police would have been keeping a closer eye on someone who they are not all that worried about in this movie because it would spoil the so called “surprise twist” for the audience) really compromises the logic and any chance of realism for the progression later on in the film.

Once this sequence is done we are onto an opening credits section of “the urban landscape from above, at night” but, before you reach for the panic button, I’d have to say that the opening titles are really well handled and the cityscapes on view are treated in a much more interesting way - by using fast dissolves and fast zooms to highlight certain areas and accentuate the links between various shots in the urban sprawl. This, coupled with typography which doesn’t stay in any one place for too long and leads your eye on to different parts of the screen, works really well and I was quite impressed with the overall treatment of what could have been another big opening movie yawn.

The downside to that is, of course, the rest of the movie is never really as good as the title sequence. Everybody, at least in terms of the actual actors performing their roles, is all very good - heroes, villains and supporting characters alike. There just doesn’t seem to be much happening with the story line and, worse, some of the bits in the movie don’t even make any sense other than it gives the writers something to hang another dumb and, in some cases, confusingly edited, action sequence on to. Why, for instance, does Bryan go to all of that trouble and place himself in an extreme danger situation which might be impossible for him to get out of, just so he can go say “Hi” to his kid without actually telling her anything more or giving her anything useful to do. It makes no sense.

In addition to Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace and the “totally wasted in minor roles these days but truly cool actress” who is Famke Janssen, we have Forest Whitaker who is basically there to serve the same function as he did in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Last Stand (reviewed here) and, like in that movie, he does a really excellent job in this picture... even going so far as to give his character a knight from a game of chess and arming himself with the elastic band from his “Bryan Mills” file and adding little gestures involving these props. It just seems though, unless there’s a much longer cut of this movie struggling to get out from somewhere, that these are distractions to stop the actor from getting bored because he seems to not have all that much function in the story in terms of his character, truth be told. He senses the dangerous and righteousness of Neeson’s personality but, for the whole movie, he still remains one step behind. It would have been more interesting if he at least contributed more to the plot and maybe teamed up and helped save Liam Neeson and the token person who gets tak3n towards the end to justify the title... but nothing like that actually happens and his character, while beautifully played, seems to be nothing more than superfluous throughout the whole movie, I’m afraid.

I know this is a fairly short review from me on this one but, alas, I really don’t have too much more to say about this movie. The original Taken was a remarkable debut in the series but, so far, the sequels have been just okay... certainly nothing capturing the special spirit of the first movie in the series. Because that first one was truly great I was hoping that the third one would be a heck of a lot better than the lacklustre second movie but, it seems, I was sadly mistak3n.

Taken 2 (aka Taken - La Vendetta)

Skill List

Taken 2 (aka Taken - La Vendetta) 
2012 France 
Directed by Olivier Megaton
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: This review will have a very particular set of spoilers. 

Two days previous: 
“Okay movie, now listen very carefully. I have a very particular set of skills which makes watching films like you very easy. If I like you, I will say good things about you in my review. But if you don’t live up to the spirit of the first movie of this franchise... I will find you. I will watch you. And I will review you poorly!”

Now: 
You know I really loved the first movie in this series of films. We’d all seen Liam Neeson jump around with his Jedi skills in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but I think this might have been one of the first times (if not, the very first?) that we’d seen him groomed by a director to be an out and out action man. We all knew he could look the part and that he could be convincing enough as an actor to make us believe it to an extent... but could he actually do a gritty, tough guy action movie without it looking really silly?

The resulting film was a resounding success. A popular movie with most of my friends (including me) and a fairly good profit “taken” at the box office... even though it turned out the initial cut of the film was severely compromised (this was thankfully restored on the eventual DVD release). Less successful was a follow up movie which Neeson headed up and which was trying to hit the same “audience vibe” as Taken. That one was called Unknown... and, unfortunately, the script let it down abysmally (see my review here).

I’ll say up front, right now, in case you think this is going to be a negative review and can’t be bothered to read anymore or skip to the end, that I had a lot less problems with Taken 2 than I thought I was going to have. I think it does have some things about it which are less than stellar but I feel, overall, the criticisms I am hearing of this movie are a little over the top and, frankly, inaccurate. If you want to hear what I think the basic problems are and whether you think they’ll spoil your experience at the cinema with this one then, please, read on.

I had some serious worries about Taken 2, and these worries stemmed from four sources. Number one was that, about a year and a half/two years ago, I read that Neeson hadn’t wanted to rush into a sequel based on the strength of the script he’d seen. I can’t remember which magazine news-feed was the source for this, but it said that Besson had replied something along the lines of... “whether you think the script is ready or not, we shoot at such and such time or... you can just not be in it”. At which point a key player in this as I see it, Mr. Neeson, got on board. A pay check is a pay check, after all. But this says to me that the script was really not in a state he wanted to touch.

Secondly... another revelation from one of the movie news-feed style sites about 6 months ago said that it would be Neeson and the character of his ex-wife, played again by Famke Janssen, who would be “taken” and it would be the daughter he spent the majority of the first film trying to rescue, who would be rescuing them. Nothing against the actress Maggie Grace (who readers may remember from Lost but, if not, then the over the top, but quite cool with it, Lockout, reviewed here) but, frankly, there’s no way the character as portrayed by her in the first film could do that here without compromising everything we know about that character and her abilities. However, while this rumour turned out to be totally true... I’m happy to say that they found a way of doing it while still retaining the “weak, spoiled brattishness” of the original character.

Thirdly... I saw the trailer.

It was awful. It’s too long and it doesn’t sell the film... especially since it gives away the story and, frankly, the story is the big problem with this movie. It feels unbelievably contrived, all to just get the name of the first picture into the title of the second... and that’s because it is contrived.

Fourthly... I’d heard there were some really bad reviews about this one on TV, radio and twitter shout outs... and I kind of believed them.

So, when I got to the cinema I wasn’t exactly expecting to have a good time. Actually, though, as a non-stop action movie... it’s not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Although the story really is badly handled... concerning a group of older thugs who are the fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers of a load of people Neeson’s character Brian tortured and killed his way through in the first movie to get his daughter back. This lot are out for revenge so when Brian goes on holiday with his daughter and ex-wife (with the obvious subtext that she won’t be his ex for much longer but become part of a family unit again), the old geezah running the show is out to kidnap and torture the lot of them.  They get Brian and his wife but lose the daughter and Brian gains access to cell phone communication while in captivity long enough to get his daughter to find him and get a gun to him (just in the nick of time for him to shoot her own would be killer)... but then he carelessly loses the wife again and, after dumping his daughter at the American Embassy, he tracks the people who survived his initial escape and kills all of them too... rescuing his wife in the process.

It’s actually not, to this untrained observer, a good structure to have as a script for this type of film. Even Kurosawa would show the audience a straight line to map out the action and then follow on through the basic outline to give a film a straight A to B feeling. This is not the only way to go with your story, obviously... but since it’s dealing with just a few incidents, this story for Taken 2 did feel like it kinda derailed itself and then reacted to new information halfway through. It’s like the climax came about two thirds of the way through... and then the film started a new act and climax which felt kinda tacked on and redundant. Would have liked a less messier way of having the same events occurring than the framework this one was hung onto, to be honest. it leaves you feeling a little unsatisfied.

However, what does work in this one, even if some of the events surrounding the characters still feels a little too concocted for convenience in their back story (as in the ex-wife having trouble with her new husband and separating so she’s free to get all doughy eyed over Brian again), is that the characters all feel like the people they were in the first one. I’d heard a criticism that this film didn’t feel like it was a Taken movie (whatever that is) and I’d disagree. I think all the characters, and actors for that matter, were faithful to their origins in the first movie and so this does genuinely feel like it’s another installment in the franchise... a weak installment, but certainly a continuation nonetheless.

Similarly, the action scenes are all as fast and furious as they were in the original and feel like they are coming from the same place. However, and this is where it gets truly annoying, the UK version of the film has had cuts made, at the suggestion of the BBFC, so the studios can keep it down to a 12A rating and get more kiddies in. Now I did know this before I saw it but, since this particular cinema trip was pretty much window shopping until the opportunity to buy an uncut version on DVD occurs (be it from France, America or possibly the UK), I relaxed my rules about seeing something cut because I didn’t want to buy this one without trying if it was awful, and since it all goes on a Cineworld Unlimited card anyway. How much of a difference could it make, I thought to myself.

Well, unfortunately, the answer to the last question is... a lot.

The editing in the fight sequences seems even more aggressive and choppy than it actually really is, is my guess, because for about half the people who Mr. Neeson sent to their final oblivion, I couldn’t even figure out how they had been killed. Were they stabbed, garrotted, strangled, shot, had their necks broken? I don’t know. One minute they were fighting and the next they were kind of laying on the floor dead... the victim of another annoying, senseless and careless censorship edit. I’m pretty sure in one fight, even, Mr. Neeson was hammering away at two guys, he kills one and then he has no opponent left... lost in the final UK cut. This is something to note then, please, film censors and studios who stupidly collaborate with them... if you keep showing acts of violence with no real consequence other than people laying around on the floor afterwards... then you will be sending a very seductive message to impressionable people throughout the land watching this stuff. People will start imitating it... after all, stuff like this doesn’t really hurt, does it? Yes, it bloody well does and censors need to let these things be seen to serve as warnings of the fragility of the human body and to help prevent the kiddies from... you know... trying this at home.

Okay, so censorship rant over with... Taken 2 is certainly not the film that it’s predecessor is, that’s for sure. However, fans of the first movie and action fans in general should still have an okay time with this movie. In fact, a friend of mine mentioned today that he’d seen it this weekend and really liked it, even though he’d not seen the first movie. So I don’t think a great deal of people are going to have too much of a problem with it... and judging from the money it took this weekend, I doubt very much if the studio cares whether they did or not. Expect a third outing a few years down the line is my guess... although I don’t know who’ll have to get “taken” in the next one... maybe the president?

Colombiana

Zoe Job

Colombiana 2011 USA/France

Directed by Olivier Megaton

Screening at UK cinemas

Warning: There are slight spoilers dealing with the earlier scenes of this movie in the following article.

You know, this movie doesn’t seem to be that well liked from what I’ve heard from other people. I’m quite up for a decent action movie though... Akira Kurosawa’s probably my all time favourite action movie director and there are also people like John Frankenheimer who I have a lot of respect for. And, for the most part, I’ve really liked this recent wave of action movies produced and co-written (but not directed) by French auteur Luc Besson such as The Transporter series, Kiss of the Dragon, the Taxi series (with some exceptions), the District 13 series (well, the brilliant first movie anyway) and, of course, the Liam Neeson actioner Taken.

However, I had heard some bad things about Colombiana, especially concerning the silliness of the first twenty minutes or so of the movie which tells the back story of Zoe Soldana’s lead character Cataleya when she was a school girl. So I was somewhat cautious and perhaps even a little cynical when I sat waiting for the lights to dim in the theatre last weekend for this screening.

As it happens, I really needn’t have worried. Colombiana is a pretty solid action vehicle for the excellent Soldana to own in her role (she was great in both Star trek 11 and The Losers too) and I’ve been trying to think of why this movie has had such a negative reaction from some people... with one reviewer even refusing to review it and warning people to not bother watching it as, "it’s not a real movie". Seriously?

I’ve possibly made this point before but I think it bears repeating here... I think the action genre, in particular, seems to have a certain section of its core audience who want to believe that the desperately exhausting athletics and damn near impossible stunts that tend to define these movies at the moment are actually doable in real life and that just a couple of minutes of the intense physical prowess on display wouldn’t turn even an above average Olympian into a shivering heap on the floor. They talk about films like, for instance, The Transporter and Charlies Angels 2: Full Throttle (both excellent action movies) as though they should be more grounded in reality... and dismiss anything remotely over-the-top in the fabric of these films, even though most of the films they do embrace have an equal “silliness factor” in them*... just maybe presented in a less in-your-face and, dare I say it for the action genre, more subtle manner?

Films like The Transporter, Crank, Charlies Angels, Machete and a whole host of others dare to push the legacy left by such great stunt-actors as Douglas Fairbanks in the spirit of having fun and not taking themselves to seriously, and in my book that’s a very valid and often refreshing area to take a movie into. These films have reached a point, not dissimilar to the horror genre which tends to have less complicated rules and trappings, where they can revel in their own silliness and actually use these qualities to enhance the on-screen thrills in a way which earlier stereotypes of their genre wouldn’t have had the confidence to do.

In defence of Colombiana, it’s not as over the top as some of those movies mentioned above and, for the life of me, I really can’t work out where the problem lies for some people. I loved the opening sequence, especially the “surprise vomit scene” which actually did make a few of the members of the audience respond in a vocal manner.

I also loved Zoe Soldana’s first scene as Cataleya, which is featured in the trailer. Her turn as a very drunk driver so she can get put in jail with the person she is gunning for is “really epic drunk playing.” I tip my hat to her once again. This sequence is all pretty cool as she escapes from her cell, revenge-assassinates her target and then returns to her cell so she can be released on bail the next morning in her false identity. However, there is a bit of a stupid mistake in this sequence, with all deference to this film’s detractors, in that to get to this guys cell she temporarily disables the fan in a ventilating shaft so she can get through (hey, at least this film even acknowledges that such unlikely crawlspaces are blocked with machinery). Unfortunately, this fan is set spinning again just as she gets through... as a suspense sequence that really wasn’t working for me to be honest. However, when she has to make a quick exit from the cell in question, she goes right back through the ventilation shaft again... but this time it’s not been in any way disabled (and nor could it have been). Bit of a clunker that.

Back on the plus side, the editing during the action sequences in no way renders the narrative incoherent and it’s good to see that in this one, at least, the editing didn’t get in the way... although I have to say that some of the unnecessarily fast edits and short shot times in the non-action sections were a little less palatable to my eyes.

As I was watching this movie I realised how the story for this one must have developed because, without those opening childhood scenes thrown into the mix, this film could easily have been the follow up to Leon (aka The Professional) in that the central character is easily the same character that Natalie Portman’s Mathilda would have grown into... with the very same “special set of skills”, to quote another Besson produced action movie, to her name. It wouldn’t surprise me if this script started off life as the Leon 2 project that Besson was regularly courting Portman for a return to the character in. I hope that, due to the fact that this movie has now been made, the idea of a sequel to Besson’s classic movie and the rich promises found therein, are still able to come to some fruition at a later date. I’ll be in the line for my ticket.

At the end of the day, Colombiana is a good turn-your-brain-off (or in my case, leave your brain off) action movie and, while the characters lack a certain depth and subtlety (in line with characters in other movies made in this manner) there’s more than enough to keep you interested all the way through. If you like your action movies... this probably won’t rock your world but it won’t leave you feeling cheated anyway. And Zoe Saldana’s energy charged acting style is kinda interesting to watch too... she’s got a certain on-screen something and I can’t quite put my finger on what that something actually is at the moment. Maybe someone here can give me a nudge in the right direction?

*Schwarzenneger outrunning a small nuclear explosion in Predator, for instance.