My Mind Taken By Aliens

I couldn't help but think, while Liam Neeson was casually dispatching yet another "bad" guy in Taken, the guy in the lift, of the multiple ironies involved. Here's another security guard just doing his job and soon enough he's unnecessarily dead in yet another gruesome film-o-genic way. Hang on, isn't this exactly the part-time job Neeson's character was doing twenty minutes ago? Obviously the camaraderie for the fellow toilers in the field he evinced in the opening BBQ sequence doesn’t extend to foreign workers. Bang bang, shoot 'em up , karate chop, but America is not a big one on unionized labor is it?

And by shooting him in each shoulder, then in the legs, I couldn't help but wonder: isn't this six-packing such an Irish thing to do?

Body-count and car chases. That's this movie. Total mindless crap - cut AWAY from the fracking chase is what I was thinking... (and it was the only time I needed to think while watching it. Higher brain function not required on the voyage.)

Oh, gentle reader, I know you. You will all love it, no doubt. It's ENTERTAINING you will say. Sometimes one needs entertainment. Well fuck off. It is NOT entertaining to me. I prefer the highly cerebral movies like Dead Man, something by Jodorowsky, or maybe Predator and of course Aliens.

Actually, Taken's strength (yes, I did enjoy the bright lights and loud noises for a while - I'm only human, just as susceptible as the rest of you morons) and its weakness is that it is just another of those completely bullshit stereotyped action flicks which I love making fun of that actually have a sinister underpinning that no-one else seems to get the first time they watch it...

This is yet another movie whose ultimate but unstated aim is to reinforce American xenophobic paranoia by continually showing how foreigners, particularly Arabs of course, are evil, corrupt and heartless. And the one-man Irish-American bulletproof army goes in - because it's HIS DAUGHTER we're talking about - with a morality down as shallow as the "revenge = justice" level, packed with enough inane stupidity that any rational person would tear their brain out through their nose with a hooked knitting needle rather than think about the possibility of this being possible. What happened to the girl he rescued from the brothel? Where did he get an IV pack and "fluid" for infusion? In short it's the type of movie which does well at the box-office because it reinforces family values, like murder, and fortunately statistical evidence has proven that 98.5% of the movie watching public are fucking idiots.

Why is it a hit? Because it is fast food cinema, efficient at surging the Dopamine; exciting, high-octane, reptilian-brain food.

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But hang on, what's with Liam's face? Has he been splurging on Preparation-H eye cream or -- SCOOP! -- is it that Liam Neeson has had the bags under his eyes done?

OMG HE'S HAD AESTHETIC SURGERY DONE! In the early scenes, I just couldn't look him in the robot-like face. What a wanker. Yes, yes, it's a major shame that his beautiful wife died, etc,…

But why the fuck do actors get this sort of vanity work done?* Do they think we're not going to notice? Do they think we are stupid? (Check stats quoted above.) Famous people should NOT LISTEN to their minders, to their publicity agents, to their stylists and mentors and advisers. There is not exception to this rule: men who have facial plastic surgery for aesthetic reasons deserve to have their skin peel off after a day or two in the sun - or whatever was the premise of the intensely chaotic Darkman, Sam Raimi's Neeson vehicle from nearly 20 years ago (also on the SQ film program).


End interlude

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Taken. Phomn Penh-like curtain brothels on a construction site in Paris. Reality? I'll bet all the naïve little American girls are just queuing up to go to Paris after this one. Not.

Surely, thinks, the American French amity levels are going to be at an all time high after this movie as well. When you consider the terrible hit their friendship took after France told the USA (and Britain and Australia) not to be fucking idiots and sex up the "intelligence" data on a pretence to gain some tiny molehill of legitimacy for the incredibly stupid idea of invading Iraq back in 2003. Well, it turned out, 'someone' was mort wrong on that one, eh?

Well, what's a few "Je vous ai dit ainsi"s between friends?

And the biggest irony of all - Taken was written by Frenchman Luc Besson.

E@L

"I told you so" - French translation by Babelfish.