Listen to me carefully…90 minutes of your life is going to be
TAKEN. You won’t get it back, any more than Taken 2 will get the 30 minutes or
so of plot, action and violence that appears to have been surgically removed,
back before you go to see it. If you pay for your cinema tickets, seriously I’d
advise you to take that money, get some snacks and re-watch Taken. Hell, paint
a wall and watch it dry. Am I being overly harsh here?
Like a Saw movie with nothing but Rubiks cubes and Chinese Finger Traps.
Like a Saw movie with nothing but Rubiks cubes and Chinese Finger Traps.
Synopsis…
“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 from kidnappers. When the father of one of the villains
Bryan killed swears revenge, and takes Bryan and his wife 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.”
I normally go in for a spoiler free review, but there is something
at the heart of what is wrong with this pathetic attempt to take adult material
and strip it down to a “kid friendly” (really?) “Product” which an example has
to be shown. To that end I strongly advise that you avoid the red type below as
I use the BBFC’s own description of edited (not censored / cut) scene. The
scene, I PROMISE YOU, makes almost NO sense whilst you are watching the filmed
consequently has almost no impact, no suspense and no sense of peril or threat;
all things absolutely critical to making the first Taken work.
Here are some background titbits from the BBFC (British
Board of Film Classification)
“During post-production, the distributor sought and was
given advice on how to secure the desired classification. Following this
advice, certain changes were made prior to submission.”
Spoiler warning Red
type from here on is spoiler country, as is the immediate response…
“There are a number of scenes featuring shootings and
explosions as well as some moments of hand-to-hand fighting. The shootings
occasionally show brief bullet impacts but there is no focus on blood or injury
detail. The scenes of hand-to-hand combat include sight of punches, kicks and
throws. Although there are some crunchy sound effects, no strong injury detail
is seen.”
Stop me if I’m wrong, but the sheer bleak brutality of Liam
Neeson’s character, in direct response to the horrific actions of the criminal
sex traffickers, is a major component of what made that film work. The above
paragraph alone is enough to set serious alarm bells ringing. In fact if you
didn’t know the above was a quote from the censor / ratings board, you could
easily read it as a critique of the filmed what is wrong with the action of
Taken 2 and what makes it, visually, such a weak sequel to such a hard film.
There are a number of scenes of threat as people are
chased and captured by the gang, as well as when they attempt to get away from
them. After the main character's wife is kidnapped, she is shown bound and
suspended upside down. It is suggested that a small wound has been made on her
throat with the intention of bleeding her to death. However, no detail of this
is shown and she is soon rescued. Later in the film she is seen tied to a chair
as she is menaced by the gang. However, no harm comes to her.
I’ll repeat a bit here “It is suggested…” It is? Well I
guess it is, but barely and I mean just barely. The scene in question is the
watershed. It was at this point that you really started to feel the film wasn’t
going to work and that there was something not right. As the audience you are
left completely bemused as to what exactly has happened, is happening to Famke
Janssen’s character. Did they cut her throat? Did they stab her? Why is she
going to die in 30 minutes? What the bloody hell is going on. Oh and I’ll get
to what is wrong with this scene from a
plot / script point of view later. The scene is so poorly edited / shot (pick
one or both) that you have to simply guess for yourself, until it is, ever so
slightly, cleared up later. This exact same thing happens a few more times in
the film and it quickly becomes clear that we are suffering a lack of visual
clarity for the sake of the imagined expanded, younger, audience.
Spoiler Zone has
ended…
Spoiler Zone has
ended…
Now to return to the level of violence in the film. It leads
to an increasingly repetitive and dull series of hand to hand and gun to gun
confrontations. It is unclear whether the director, Olivier Megaton, is simply
too poor to add more interest to these numerous action scenes, or if the
decision to change the film into a weak PG-13 & 12A movie instead has
robbed us of some clever and brutal action. The editing seems messy enough that
it could just as easily be the money men cutting the shots to ribbons to make
the lower rating OR just piss poor film making. Certainly we know that you make
exciting fight scenes in a film with a lower rating, Matt Damon’s Bourne films,
Jackie Chan, Casino Royale and more have all shown that. That this film failed
to do so is poor. Of course we should remember that even if it had succeeded it
would STILL have been pale shadow of Taken. That film titanium hard, brutal and
shocking; it was a film for adults. To make that clear, in the UK the film was
rated 18. Sure in North America the R rating does allow for 13 year olds to see
the film when accompanied by an adult; but never the less Taken 2 represents a
significant downgrade. When you see it in British terms you realise that the
film has gone down TWO levels. From an 18, skipping the 15 rating and hitting a
12A: From a film only suitable for adults, to a film 8 year olds can watch with
their older siblings! Amusingly the American MPAA state that Taken 2 is “Rated PG-13 for
intense sequences of violence and emotion, and some sensuality.” I can assure you that there is NO
emotion in this film, at all.
So the film is about as hardcore as an episode of iCarly,
fair enough; but do we at least have a thrilling plot to keep us on our toes in
the meantime? Unfortunately not. Even by ‘check your brain’ action movie
standards this film is pretty weak plot wise. The antagonists take our heroes
to one secret lair, and then move to a second hideout for no apparent reason; well
except that it allows Liam Neeson to be able to follow the evil scum from one
place to the other. Prisoners are left sloppily unguarded rooms away so that
they can conveniently escape or have very long, un-whispered conversations. I
don’t know at what level this decision was taken; this mercenary (and I use
that word cautiously as he film business is a business and money has to be
made) decision to neuter the film, but I have to hope that Luc Besson (Leon,
Nikita, The Fifth Element) and Robert Mark Kamen are better than this. I have
to hope that they wrote a much better story than we have been served up here.
So the film is about as hardcore as an episode of iCarly,
fair enough; but do we at least have a thrilling plot to keep us on our toes in
the meantime? Unfortunately not. Even by ‘check your brain’ action movie
standards this film is pretty weak plot wise. The antagonists take our heroes
to one secret lair, and then move to a second hideout for no apparent reason; well
except that it allows Liam Neeson to be able to follow the evil scum from one
place to the other. Prisoners are left sloppily unguarded rooms away so that
they can conveniently escape or have very long, un-whispered conversations. I
don’t know at what level this decision was taken; this mercenary (and I use
that word cautiously as he film business is a business and money has to be
made) decision to neuter the film, but I have to hope that Luc Besson (Leon,
Nikita, The Fifth Element) and Robert Mark Kamen are better than this. I have
to hope that they wrote a much better story than we have been served up here.
I can’t recommend this
film on any level, even a getting to see Liam Neeson kick some ass level.
Movie-going / popcorn experience - 2/10
Critical, film school view - 0/10
Overall score - 1/10
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