TAKEN 2

Liam Neeson continues to capitalise on his career hand-break turn into hard-boiled action hero, with this mechanical, shameless cash-in of a sequel, TAKEN 2.  Despite being directed competently by the deliciously named Olivier Megaton (TRANSPORTER 3), this movie is really the brain-fart of writer-producer Luc Besson, and betrays all his simplistic sexual and racial politics.  As the flick opens, Neeson's super security guard Bryan Mills takes a job in Turkey, after which he is joined by his teenage daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and his ex-wife-on-whom-he-is-crushing Lenore (Famke Janssen).  Ex-husband and wife are soon kidnapped by the vengeful father of the goon Bryan killed in the original movie, leaving Kim alone in the hotel, also prey to hitmen.  The first half of the film sees Kim guided improbably by her father to locate and help him escape. The second half sees her safely deposited in the US Embassy and Bryan return to the fray to rescue his ex-wife and do bad things to bad guys.  

Of course, the story has so many plot holes and improbabilities that one could drive a horse and cart through it.  (Not least the fact that as Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, it doesn't have a US Embassy!)  But that's not the point of a movie like this.  The point is whether or not you find the chase sequences entertaining and tense.  I didn't.  They felt derivative and "tab A into slot B".  Of course, Liam Neeson is enormously likeable, and we root for him, but this movie really is far tamer and more boring than the original.  Moreover, the politically dubious depiction of evil muslim gangsters remains troubling. 

TAKEN 2 is on release in France, Hong Kong, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore and the UK. It opens tomorrow in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the USA and Vietnam. It opens on October 11th in Cambodia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Peru, Slovenia; on October 12th in Bulgaria, Estonia, India and South Africa; on October 19th in Panama; on October 26th in Lithuania; on November 22nd in the Netherlands; on December 20th in Macedonia and on January 11th in Japan.

TAKEN 2 has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated PG-13.

TAKEN - 24 the movie

TAKEN is a slick, quick thriller that sticks in the throat. Liam Neeson plays a Jack-Bauer-like US special ops agent whose daughter, Kim, is like Kim Bauer, kidnapped. This being a piece of neo-con agit-prop, the kidnappers don’t have a grudge against her father, or indeed, stepfather, either of which would’ve been interesting. Rather, the kidnappers are improbably traffickers in sex slaves who have decided that their business model would be more profitable if they kidnapped rich young tourists rather than duping poor East Europeans. Now, I can see why this might save on “transport costs” but surely if you and some complicit French rozzers are running a sex-trafficking business you’d rather not attract the attention of rich, angry Yanquis parents putting pressure on the local cops via an irate US embassy?

At any rate, after half an hour of mooning over his sappy daughter, Liam Neeson jumps on a plane and heads to Paris where he single-handedly uncovers the plot and discovers his daughter while killing and torturing lots of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and evil rapist towel-heads. Yes, yes, in this world, every Frenchman carries a baguette under his arm and every Muslim want to rape young Americans. In short, TAKEN is a film whose tone and content are lifted straight out of 24 and whose entire world-view was so roundly mocked in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. I can’t quite believe that Liam Neeson agreed to star in such xenophobic, derivative drivel.

TAKEN was released earlier this year in France, Israel, China, South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Spain, Australia, Italy, Poland, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Russia, Thailand, Mexico and Venezuela. It opens this weekend in the UK and Portugal and next weekend in Austria and Brazil. It opens in the USA on January 23rd 2009 and in Germany on February 5th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is remarkably like a Jane Austen novel. It's peopled with a group of women searching for love. Althought the women face obstacles, not least their own inability to see love when it's staring them in the face, everything ends happily and order is restored. The entire process is charming and witty and involving and entirely harmless. The ensemble cast do a great job. I particularly liked Hugh Dancy is his role as a relentlessly optimistic IT-geek called Grigg. I've never been particularly impressed by Dancy before but he utterly won me over with his performance in a role which is hard to take seriously. He makes Grigg more than just a two-dimensional nice guy. The upshot is that I finished the movie in a sunny mood entirely at odds with my usual callous, cyncical demeanour.

Once the optimistic glow had subsided, my usual cynicism kicked in and the house of cards collapsed. The whole movie was contrived from top to bottom. The idea is that five women and one man meet once a month and discuss one of Austen's novels. Such is Austen's universal wit and wisdom that they can draw piquant life lessons from her novels and apply them to their own lives in contemporary California. Problem is that a lot of the lessons seem misapplied, or stretched to say the least.

Consider PERSUASION - a wonderful novel about second chances. The lessons are applied to Prudie and Dean. Prudie has delusions of a Left-Bank life; Dean is a neanderthal. Apparently having him read PERSUASION will lead to a rekindling of their romance. Sorry. Not buying it. The whole set up of the film is that they are congenitally unsuited. Reading a novel won't change that. And what about the relationship at the core of the film - between a repressed older woman, Jocelyn, and the younger man determined to win her love - Grigg. Apart from the completely predictable way in which they come together, I really hated the fact that the reasons for Joceyln to be so closed off were never explained. This made it hard to sympathise with her. She just seemed mean.

Apparently these issues are dealt with at more length in the novel and I look forward to reading it. And I suppose any movie can't be all bad if it makes you want to spend more time with its characters....?

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB played Toronto 2007 and was released last year. It's now available on DVD.

THE FOG - not scary

Well, I can't call THE FOG "this week's piss-poor seventies remake" because it is based on a movie that came out in 1980, but you get the drift. The 1980s version was directed by John Carpenter (of HALLOWEEN fame) and was a moderately successful horror film. As the title suggests, an American coastal town is enveloped in fog, out of which emerge vengeful ghost sailors. Oh yes. The movie wasn't fantastic but it looked great, the acting was fine, and Carpenter did manage to ratchet up the tension as the story progressed. I haven't seen it for a while, but I do remember a few moments that made me jump. The problem with the remake is that it looks fake, the acting is poor, and it is not scary AT ALL. While I was sitting in the theatre not being scared I had some time on my hands. I spent that time wondering: a) why remake THE FOG at all? b) why use CGI fog when it just looks fake rather than creepy, and you can make real fog easily enough? c) why is Tom Welling a.k.a Clark Kent in TV's Smallville not making harmless teen comedies? d) what the hell is Selma Blair doing with her career? I honestly think she is great actress, but with the exception of the Todd Solondz flick, STORYTELLING, how would we know? e) can we sue director, Rupert Wainwright, for crimes against cinema? So far, he has inflicted MC Hammer videos, STIGMATA and this god-awful remake on us. If we don't incarcerate him, he'll probably end up helming Deuce Bigalow 3. Answers on the back of a post-card please.

THE FOG went on release in the US in October 2005. It is now on release in the UK, Austria and Germany and hits France on April 12th 2006.