You're not crazy. Frankly, I'm dissapointed by how low people's standards on this forum are, between this and Underworld getting high praise. Is a high body count enough to justify across the board As? Lord knows I love a good action movie, and indeed found Pierre Morrel's first film District B-13 to be parkour-ious fun. But this was just lazy, toothless and cheap. Everything that came before the kidnapping was cringe worthy; what followed was not much better.

The action scenes were disjointed and obviously cropped to make a PG-13 rating, and the entire thing was over before it had even warmed up. Liam Neeson is the only redeeming factor, giving far too much gravitas to what would otherwise be a DTV Segal vehicle.

When I was walking out, I regretted having paid $6, and for having spent a Monday evening so foolishly, when I could have done homework or jerked off.

Too much information.

Wait'll WATCHMEN comes out.. You haven't seen anything yet..

True, that was rude and tactless. Can I blame it on having just seen Taken?

Good shit man... B+

http://nevadasagebrush.com/blog/2009/02 ... -extremes/

No need to feel insulted KJer's - - MovieDude just doesn't seem to "get" comic action movies. Just take a look at his reviews of Live Free and Die Hard or Shoot 'Em Up.

I suspect he is in his "serious phase", so the good news is we can expect MovieDude to direct his exemplary analytic and writing skills towards some outstanding reviews of artsy films for the next couple of years...

The movie was watchable but it was way to predictable. I had figured out by the time his french freind kept saying he only had a desk job that he knew all about what had happened and was going to betray Liam early on. If that wasn't enough it was hammered into your skull when he is talking to him on the cellphone from the top of the tower.

The movie itself was disjointed and reminded me often of scenes from Hostel and Bourne but wihtout the style. Some of the action scenes seemed absurd particularily after the auction scene.

It could of worked except there was no sense of tension throughout the movie. Many scenes seemed forced like the one where he hassles the girl so he could plant a mic. Or the way he found the spotter.

The cops were almost non existant(only 2 major scenes). I Loved B13 but this movie was forgetable.

D

BTW Bradley

Shoot Em'up was a crappy movie. However I liked Live Free it wasn't the best but it was good. Can't say anything bad about it besides I see David Marconi every now and then so that precludes me from being critical anyways.

I'm sensing a pattern here...

This is one of the suprising films for me, after the suppose bad WOM it got in europe i thought it would be mediocre but i was wrong, this film was damn good, yes its a Bourne Clone but its a good one, i liked it very much, i thought Neeson was very good in it.

A-

You can't please everyone, sorry you're one of the few bad-mouthers.
Incidentally, what kind of action movies do you like?
Don't have to look at everything as art or whatever you're doing because not everything is.
If it fulfills its purpose, it's done well.
It was a fun action movie and it did what it was supposed to.
Don't be hating.




Bradley, Oh and Live Free and Shoot 'Em Up, I also loved.
May inch Taken out if due to the stupid daughter's 9yrold mentality.

I love bombastic action movies of the Michael Bay variety. Those who accuse Bad Boys II of being misanthropic to me have always missed the point. That film was so outrageous with the pyrotechnics and car chases, and so cruel towards every extra who got in Will Smith's way, that it went past being over-the-top and became a self-serving parody, the ultimate violent action movie.
As for the small scale, I love Tony Jaa's stuff, can't wait to see more of him, and also really dug Pierre Morrell's first feature, District B-13. All those films worked with relatively spartan budgets, but thanks to some ingenious fight scenes, confidently filmed to let you see every blow, they're excellent fun.
As for Man on Fire, the film I would most closely compare Taken, it was incredibly stylized, but beyond it's dizzying camera work and editing, the film was a sprawling revenge epic with a dramatic core that I could go with.

Taken falls in between the cracks. It's clear that it wants to be dirty, gritty, and taken very seriously. Yet the plot is far too insulting for to me give it that honor. Where in Hostel the characters made multiple bad decisions that led them to getting ripped apart by the evil foreigners, here the daughter doesn't even stand a chance. The first person they talk to out of Charles de Gaulle kidnaps them! The girls were planning on going on a full fledged concert romp around Europe, and they don't even make it past two hours?The director being French, I can only assume the reason he made his country out to be so perilous is because he wanted to scare stupid Americans away. Otherwise, this is not only Europhobic, but propaganda cementing the concept that anywhere that isn't part of the U.S. of A is prone to cause immediate destruction to foolish Americans who think the rest of the world is friendly, not our enemy.

So maybe we can let Taken slide on being a stupid, silly action movie that because it has such low ambitions, doesn't deserve to be looked at as anything remotely resembling art, or a film. I think that's a lazy defense, but fine. So why couldn't they have a single action scene not involve the camera guy spazzing out and keeping us from being able to see a single punch connect? Most every fight has been rendered incomprehensible, either to insure a PG-13 rating (I'm not sure why, the MPAA will let someone get killed in any way possible as long as there isn't too much blood) or more likely, to fool the audience into thinking any of these actors knows how to fight. Then again, no one but Liam Neeson does put up much of a fight do they? Even the cast and crew seem so aware that Liam Neeson is head and shoulders above them, that they never put an obstacle in his path that he can't demolish in less than five seconds. There's nary a moment where I thought the guy was in the smallest spot of bother.

Sure, this movie accomplished what it wanted to. But it did so with a bare minimum of style, fun or sense. See, I'm a huge action movie fan, I grew up on Schwartzennager and Indiana Jones, and I felt cheated by how old hat everything in this movie felt.

Ya got the action part down pat, but yer still missin' the comic part.

Taken is a comic action movie, not a perfect one, but there's a definite streak of cartoonishness running down the heart of this whole pickle...

I really really must of missed the comic part. Maybe it was in the foreigners because I saw the movie without subtitles and I don't speak Albanian.

If you have to aks what type of movie I like...Well let me just say this I LOVE most of Luc Besson's stuff. I love the original Taxi, I love the Transporter, I love The Fifth Element, I loved Ong Bak, I LOVED La Femme Nikita and Point of No Return, I lOVED D13, I liked Kiss of the Dragon.

This movie on the other hand was jsut flat out crap. It was disjointed in some areas, beat you over the head with things in the other areas. The humor has been done a trillion times before like the guy in the elevator at the party or the translator was just flat. Seriously I felt like I have seen this film a million times before depending on which scene we were in.

The predictability of this film killed any and all tension. The action was about as exciting as Smoking Aces which means it was not. Of course only the action you could see. The satisfaction from a good revenge flick was lacking. There was not one scene in this movie that made me laugh or go OMG that was the most awesome thing ever....or even that is 400th most awesome thing ever.

It was literally like eating plain yogurt except it still not goo for you because the made it out of crap.

We got the US R-rated version over here.

Man on Fire was so shit though. Both are entirely separate films as well. Taken acts like a 24 type of movie, while Man of Fire was more of a revenge/drama film.

Taken is far more stylised than MoF. That is why it is allowed to go over the top and can only work as an 80 minute fast paced thriller.

Dam, this was awesome, such a good time at the movies, its like my Rambo experience of 08 but to a lesser extent with an intense plot as well. A, I have to see this R rated.

Has anyone seen both versions? I'm interested to know what got cut.

I've never not cared about stupid plot holes and suspension of disbelief as much as I did here. I loved Liam Neeson! He kicked ass and had my adrenaline going. I wanted more. B+

I watched the R rated one, I honestly can't imagine why any of the action scenes would have been cut they are rather bloodless. Only thing I can imagine being cut is the static shots of heroin needles and trackmarks.

MPAA, Violence = GOOD! Fleeting Drug references = BAD!

Liam Neeson does a great job in this thrilling piece with good and suprising twists and action added in.

B+

Liam Neeson is really bad-ass, and I really liked how the trailer revealed so little (besides that one big scene) that the entire movie felt fresh, but everything about it besides Neeson was pretty ordinary and conventional, by thriller standards. For a Luc Besson presentation, that was a bit disappointing.

C+

Ha! Taken., a cool, kicks ass, a guy movie all the way! And moreover Liam Neeson has given a performance of what should be most fathers response to someone attempting to harm their family... But I give it B+ as it seems to be remake.

I'm pretty sure most fathers don't have the same skill set as Liam Neeson's character, but I do agree in principle - - an accountant father should apply his mad accounting skillz with equal vigor to save his family...

Highly preposterous but efficient and entertaining. Liam Neeson is a total badass, while poor Maggie Grace barely factors and is called upon to play a 17-year old who acts 7 and runs like she's physically impaired. But anyway, there are so many logic problems but the ride is so fun that you won't care. B

What a stupid fucking movie. I love thrillers, I love dumb thrillers, as long as I am being thrilled. Nothing about this movie was exciting, enticing, entertaining. It had it's moments but it was lame. C

TAKEN - 7/10 ( B )

It's totally generic, but it's pretty entertaining. It's shocking it's such a big hit in the US, but it's no surprise that audiences are loving it. It's just that kind of crowd-pleasing movie. I normally like Maggie Grace, but her character was a bit annoying. What kind of 17 year-old acts like this? She runs like a little kid in nearly every scene and has the mental capacity of a 10 year-old. Also, everything seemed to come together way too easily for Neeson's character.

My only other major complaint is that it's too short. Not long after it got going there was little more than a half hour left. But overall it had its fair share of exciting moments and was a good time.