Taken 2008 is Luc Besson's revenge for Man on Fire by Tony Scott
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
On the surface, the 2008 movie Taken directed by Pierre Morel and written by Luc Besson ( he was busy directing Arthur cartoons ) is about how it is dangerous for little girls to be in the world. And about how awful the human trafficking is. And about how good, people who fuck up human traffickers are. But then, out of nowhere, it makes people cheer when a guy is buying an underage girl at a human trafficking auction. As if, it makes you think: Is Luc Besson just trying to show Quentin Tarantino that he is a master of corrupting the audience? ↩ Reply
In a way the film is kind of like a combination of Tony Scott's Man on Fire and James Cameron's True Lies. Specifically the ending of it. But for some reason, having a very good opportunity to have his own spin on the cliche of somebody in the family figuring out that our main hero is a spy, we get a movie where everybody knows that he is a spy already. His "secret agent" persona is absolutely and utterly non-secret. Which is kind of a bummer. And makes the movie very much not like True Lies. We don't get the obligatory, girl being saved by dad moment, when she is like "What the fuck? Who are you dad?". No... in this movie we get her just be like "You came for me? What?"... even though, based on the whole rest of the movie, him being a spy being not a secret and him literally telling her what to do before she got kidnapped, so it will be easier for him to find her, would have been a good enough indication that dad is coming. ↩ Reply
So basically the movie is more like Tony Scott's Man on Fire. The funny thing is, that in my review of Man on Fire I argued that it was Tony's version of Leon: The Professional which was written and directed by Luc Besson. In a way, you can even say that Besson just wanted to avenge Man on Fire being a ripoff of his movie. Kind of like what David Lynch did with Lost Highway, which was a revenge for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which he believed to be a plagiarism of his film Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage. ↩ Reply
Also this Oliver Stone movie. It was shot from a script by Quentin Tarantino. Kind of... Tarantino disowned the film, because Stone changed the script too much. Alternating the point of view. And making it too political. But... it does bring up back to Quentin. ↩ Reply
In my review of the 2018'th Eli Roth remake of Death Wish I argued about the idea of "corrupting the audience". And how successful "corruption" ( or successful rhetoric ) is a sign of quality of a movie. ↩ Reply
Besson illustrates this quality rather well. His 1985 film Subway is still regarded as one of the defining works of the French Punk subculture. Because the film argues quite successfully ( and without much effort ) that being a Punk and living somewhere in the catacombs of the Paris Subway system, is kind of cool, actually. Then his Leon, at the very least during watching, makes you seeming completely forget that pedophilia is considered a bad thing. His 2013 film The Family shows a family of absolutely deranged people. Yet the movie is successful at making us care for the psychopaths. And even here in Taken which he wrote, we see a man buying an underage girl at a human trafficking convention and we cheer of him. The man knows how to successfully "corrupt the audience". The man has a talent for it. ↩ Reply
In a way to be good at corrupting the audience you need to be either Quentin or Luc. Luc Besson would do. Luca Guadagnino would do even better. But that's besides the point. ↩ Reply
What the fuck is Luc's obsession with Paris? I know he was born in Paris. But come on man... Tony Scott changed the location from the book, Italy, to Mexico, so that the kidnapping plot would make a whole lot of sense. But what does Luc do? Does he look where people are kidnapped? No... He makes the kidnappers operate out of the Paris. What the fuck, Luc? ↩ Reply
When it comes to being violent and shit, the movie has a far better rhetoric than Eli Roth's Death Wish, because the movie is staying the fuck out of politics. The father played by Liam Neeson does some rather fucked up shit, like shooting a woman that has nothing to do with it, just to get a guy talking. Like, in a way, some of this film is torture porn, like in Eli Roth's Death Wish. Just because it is a Besson film and because people whose first name is Luc are good at "corrupting the audience" you don't feel like you are watching something wrong. Every single thing the main character does feels sort of justified, no matter how bad-shit crazy it is. ↩ Reply
Also this line "I will find you. And I will kill you". So fucking iconic. Besson couldn't resist this line. This line was so sexy and so sexily done that Besson reused it, in a fun kind of throwaway way in Valerian. One of the alien merchants says it, kind of similarly to how Liam Neeson says it in Taken. ↩ Reply
Okay, I'm talking about Luc Besson way too much. But what about the director Pierre Morel? Well, he isn't bad. He does have a sort of chaotic way of shooting action, but I kind of like the way the action is shot in the movie. It is something like if Michael Bay was mixed with Michael Mann. It has a bit of this Tony Scott feeling to it. But it doesn't go crazy with the editing. So it is not particularly inspired by anything Tony Scott did ( apart from maybe Man on Fire story-wise ). It kind of seems like the film is trying to imitate the Borne Identity movies by Paul Greengrass who is trying to imitate both Michael Bay and Michael Mann. Where Michael Bay is trying to imitate Tony Scott. Yeah, something like this. c:0 ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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