Things I Did Not Understand About The Film 'Taken'

[annwfyn]

• Did that film really just base its entire plot on the white slave trade? And not just any old white slave trade, but a variant of the myth last heard of in Victorian England, namely that dark skinned men might lurk at street corners, drugging nice young white girls who went away from home without parental permission, and drag them off to dens of iniquity. Did they really just do that? Really?



• Was that entire film genuinely based on the premise that it is not safe for nice girls from California to go on holiday to Paris? I mean, Paris? And not the dodgy part of Paris that evil French police may want to wall off (like in District 13) or where you may find Vincent Cassel with a gun (like la Haine). No, it isn't safe to fly to Paris, get a taxi to a nice apartment in the posh part of town, and then dance around the apartment to loud rock music.
  
  I'm still glitching at this. I mean, it's like a film being released with the central message that it's not safe to get a taxi from Heathrow to Chelsea, or maybe Richmond.



• Why on earth did the bad guys insist on bursting into said Parisian apartment to kidnap the rich American girls, kidnapping one whilst she was on the phone to her psycho CIA Dad, thus triggering the events of the entire film? The girls had already agreed to get into a car with the dodgy dark skinned man they met at the airport (moral of the story girls - if he looks a bit foreign, don't agree to meet for that coffee!)
  
  So, they are getting into a car in the evening to go wherever he takes them. Why risk getting arrested by breaking into a house earlier? And surely there is a high chance of that. Even if you've paid off the police to not raid your brothel, you can't pay off every single gendarme in Paris, and one of them may well respond to the phone call from the other rich Parisians who are not happy with the apartment upstairs being noisily burglarized. With added screaming.



• I am also still struggling with the business model endorsed by the dodgy Albanian bad guys. OK, so, they used to smuggle girls into western Europe who were desperately poor and came from Eastern Europe, promising jobs as au pairs or models. So far, so reasonable. Then they decided it was cheaper to just kidnap rich tourists from the airport and force them into prostitution.. I can't help but feel that this was not the most sensible of moves.
  
  For chrissakes, can you imagine the number of press explosions there would have been? Apparently several pretty white teenagers from wealthy backgrounds - Americans, Britons, Scandanavians - are going missing every week from Charles de Gaulle airport. The French police aren't facing huge pressure to sort this out before the tourist trade starts to fall apart? Interpol aren't involved? What about the FBI, or Scotland Yard, or the private detectives hired by the families back home?
  
  And what the hell do you do with these girls when you've got them? Girls from Eastern Europe may have nowhere to go, no way of really sorting themselves out. Rich American teens just need to make one phone call. So, you keep them doped up all the time? Like, 24/7? Isn't that expensive?
  
  I still think it would be cheaper, less risky, and easier to just go for poor girls who were desperate to get into the country than kidnap rich American brats.



• I'm also kinda creeped out by the racial & national dynamics in that film. The basic gist seemed to be Americans = good (even when they are torturing people, including one guy's wife, just to get the info they need). French = dodgy and corrupt. Dark skin (Albanians, Arabs etc) = evil. It's fine to torture and kill men with dark skin. They are probably going to sell your daughter into prostitution. Actually, give the French a bit of a kicking whilst you're at it. They are nasty, corrupt, and may well object to your gun toting, car chasing, building exploding rampage across Paris.
  
  Jeremiah mildly objected to the Arab villain using a Thai martial art. I felt that that was rather nit picky, and anyway, I'm sure all the villains went to 'Foreign Person Training Camp' where they all swapped skills. There was little attempt to differentiate them from each other.



• I did leave the film wondering about some of the loose ends. Actually, no, not loose ends. More great rivers of plot, left drifting out to see. What happened to the poor girl that Liam Neeson dragged out of a brothel and was last seen lying in a bed in a random hotel he'd booked with a drip coming out of her arm. Did he just leave her here? What about the other three girls that the dodgy Arab at the end had bought in the white slave auction (really? They used that as their plot?) who were last seen stumbling confusedly around a boat filled with bodies, which seemed to be drifting down the Seine with no crew? Did Liam Neeson just leave them there? And what were the French government doing about this crazy American who was responsible for at least 30 murders in the centre of Paris in a 36 hour period? He wasn't exactly subtle - no mask, no gloves, no fake name. Are extradition proceedings starting as the credits rolled?



• Did that film really have an extended monologue from the 'hero' on CIA torture practices and why they were good? Really? That made him the good guy?

I came out of that film feeling like someone had just put a load of plasticine on my face and called it a make over. It just didn't make sense. Honestly, I found Death Race considerably more plausible, and it had the advantage of making me giggle like a small demonic hamster.

Jason Stratham in a mask, in gladiatorial car duels = good.

Liam Neeson torturing Frenchmen = bad.