Word: heroes
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Fans of the feisty Gallic comic character Asterix have always loved the monumental brawls their hero regularly finds himself in. Few, however, are taking pleasure in the latest Asterix fight - an ugly donnybrook between the comic's illustrator Albert Uderzo and his daughter Sylvie over her accusation that Uderzo was sweet-talked into selling his beloved creation to crass business interests. Now father and daughter are locked in battle over the future of the diminutive Gaul - and the $15 million or so he generates every year...
...second best part of Taken is a phone message the movie's hero, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), leaves for the man who has just kidnapped his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). "I don't know who you are," Bryan says, his voice icy with a strong man's resolve. "I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare...
...These roiling undercurrents are hard to miss, but the movie and Neeson seem unaware of them. What they do understand are the conventions of the genre. And one is that when an action hero warns his daughter about imminent danger - say, the potential perils of spending the summer in Paris with a classmate - Papa knows whereof he preacheth. Perhaps some angel has whispered to him that if the girls did just go safely museum-hopping, it wouldn't be a Luc Besson movie...
...dialogue scenes with lumpy rhythms and action choreography that has a low plausibility factor, I'd guess that Taken means to be a critique of a man as fascinated by his daughter's endangered purity as her predators are - and, by extension, of the thriller genre's obsessive hero. Back in the '70s, a cop film mined the similarities between the man with the badge and the criminal he hunted. That was The French Connection, whose wary sympathy for, and exposé of, the cop played by Gene Hackman won the movie an Oscar for Best Picture. But this actual...
...Obama’s rival, Senator John McCain, all but called Obama a child molester, all but called Obama a traitor, and in response Obama called McCain a “hero.” Wright, on the other hand, praised Obama endlessly, officiated at Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, and gave him the title of his best-selling book. But he also made a few correct remarks about American racism, labeled too “controversial” to keep them from being discussed seriously. Instead of standing by his friend and supporter as the statesman...