Taken 2 (2012)

Action movie villains are stupid. And this pretty much summarizes the major problem with this film. I was a fan of the first movie, primarily because it provided a strong protagonist with a convincing character backdrop to suspend your disbelief despite how formulaic and cliche it really was. This film gave us exactly the same story, same tone, same tempo but delivers poorly in comparison, a large part due to the reduced scope of the antagonists. Also, this movie relies heavily on the fact that you've already seen its predecessor to understand the character motivations and most of the interactions in the first half.

In the first film, we had a story where an former CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) straining to re-establish his relationship with his naive daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and ends up having to save her as she gets herself entangled in a large scale human trafficking operation in Europe. Thus the difficulty of the rescue operation was more sophisticated and genuinely required his past skills and contacts to make his mission possible (and plausible). The second film was a revenge story played very straight, and there was no thrill; from about halfway into the movie any action film lover could already recite the remainder of the plot.

What are the positives? I'd say the daughter was the most interesting character in this film. I guess partly she had a lot more material to work with. She was kidnapped, drugged, sold as a high-price sex slave and saved by her dad at gunpoint in the previous film. Having to move back into a regular life after this type of trauma is not easy, and Grace does portray these challenges convincingly. It also gives her strong motivation to step up when her family needs her to.

The scenes with Grace in bikinis was a bit of naughty fan service. Unnecessary and inconsequential to the story, yes, but the marketing people decided they needed the sex appeal to fill more seats in the theaters (especially for the trailer). At least she is now over 16 and of legal age I guess (or over 18 since the film's set in Turkey).

Neeson delivers a similar performance as in the first film but with no memorable one-liners; a let down by action movie standards and this franchise's standard. The mother receives no character development in this story. She is just a damsel in distress like her daughter was in the first film. In fact I would say she was less convincing in this film despite having a lot more screen time, as we don't see her have any meaningful interactions other than "I miss you".

But the biggest negative ultimately is the antagonists in this film. While their motivation to hunt Bryan's family is understandable, their capabilities to track down and find Bryan's family is comparatively superior to their gun-power  Seriously, it's been over 40 years since action films of this flavor has been around, and no villains decides to take proper fighting/shooting lessons? This type of formula makes me want to skip all action films altogether because it's so predictable and unsuspenseful. And just like how the mother is very one-note, the villains also only have one dimension: "He will pay!"

I think the only time the bad guys within Hollywood films are anywhere near competent is when we the audience are expected to be rooting for them. Here I am talking about films such as Ocean's 11, Inception, and to a lesser extent Entrapment, where the protagonist are actually bad guys or do work that is ethically wrong. Funnily, these are all heist films; I'm sensing this is the other action film formula Hollywood producers alternate to try and camouflage how little credit they give to their audience.

The only exception to these rule I can think of right now is The Terminator series, and perhaps that is why it is considered such a great franchise by both moviegoers and film critic standards, because they worked hard to make the villains genuinely threatening and memorable even if the end result is the same. Times like these I turn to independent films to help push the envelope on how to make a different action flick with fresher ideas.

Anyway I digress. So what's my overall verdict? I loved Liam Neeson and Maggie Grace's performance, the action was standard, and the villains are too plain and painfully cliche. If you liked Taken and hoped this would be another great addition to the franchise, I recommend you just re-watch Taken instead. If you haven't watched either films before, just the first one.

4.0 / 10

P.S. I referred to this film like it was a Hollywood production: I know this is actually a French film, but this film uses their formula, so I still label it as "made by Hollywood".

The Nitpicks 

(Spoilers alert!)

There aren't too many nitpicks this time. I assume moviegoers have accepted the common cliches no matter how farfetched or ridiculous they really are. So I've only listed more serious ones, or the ones that bothered me:

• Near the earlier part of the film when the Albanians first tried to chase and kidnap Bryan, they shot at his car through the front window, which could have killed him, when their boss specifically instructed them not to. Perhaps they were just shooting to scare and slow him down, but given how bad they shoot in the rest of the film they probably could have killed him.
• After Bryan and Lenore gets kidnapped, Bryan secretly calls Kim and asks her to throw a grenade so that he can estimate their distance from each other using the delay in sound. The first explosion takes about 4, maybe 5 seconds to reach his ears, and he determines they are 4.5km apart. Firstly, the speed of sound is actually much slower than that, and should have taken about 13 seconds if they are that far apart. Secondly, unless that's a custom made sound grenade, the explosion of standard granades are hard to hear even at 1km away. Thirdly, those throws are pretty good for someone who has never operated a grenade before. Sign her up as the main star for Taken 3; she's got her father's genes!
  
  I'm sure no one would bother doing the maths during the film, but that first grenade throw was a major distraction for me. The most important aspect of this film, in fact what holds it together and keeps our suspense of disbelief, is that Neeson's character pays extreme attention to details, and so he shouldn't and wouldn't make such a miscalculation. In fact if we were factually correct his daughter should have failed to find them.
• Around the middle of the film, Bryan and Kim, after losing their trail of Albanian mobsters, crashes through the US embassy's gates with a stolen taxi to drop off Kim so she can protected. The next scene is literally Neeson just back on the streets of Istanbul trying to backtrack his way to the mob's base. Why didn't the soldiers or diplomats stop him? He just barged into the embassy terrorist style, endangering the lives of many american soldiers and also having to explain to Turkish government the series of deaths and car accidents he left behind. It's really hard to accept that his friends could buy him out of the political complications he just caused.
  
  Also later on in the film we see Kim finally getting her driver's license, despite having gone on a road rage earlier without any license and breaking hundreds of road rules in the span of 3 minutes. Maybe Bryan convinced the soldiers he was the one driving, but either ways I think the US government would have a few more questions before letting her take the exams again.
• At the end of the film where Bryan had killed off all the low ranks and now confronting the big shots, why didn't Murad (the main boss) carry a gun? Before we arrived at this confrontation they already established their intention to simply kill his wife. When they knock her unconscious to use her as bait so he would go towards her, they could easily have finished them both off at point blank range, which is a much bigger win according to their plan. Instead they have a fist fight, where the big boss could have easily shot Bryan while he was distracted with fighting the surprisingly skilled torturer. Action movie villains are stupid.
• They didn't make anything of Kim's boyfriend! He has two scenes, one early on and one at the very end. He does look slightly Albanian and have some semblance to Murad. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if he was secretly the fourth son of Murad, managed to trick Bryan with a clean-looking background, and tries to kill Bryan at the very end of the movie when he was invited along to their fish and chips dinner? Fake outs are common in action films, but it's a potentially awesome way to end the film! Maybe they'll save it for the next film (if there is one). Maybe there will be an alternative ending with this twist, but I'm still not going to buy the DVD.

Film in 2012 so far

Having started this blog late into the year I feel a bit bad as I did miss out on reviewing some of the bigger films during their run. But rather trying to accomplish the overly time-consuming task of writing the 2000 word essays for every movie that came out this year, even just the ones with wider (Australian) release, I'll just do a single paragraph overall impression of the ones I have seen this year. And just in case you're wondering, they are in the order that I saw them at the movies, not from worst to best.


The Vow

I am not a big fan of romance comedy or romance drama and only watch maybe one a year at the big screen. Most of the time it's too cheesy, too emotionally manipulative or just not interesting, and only a handful of exceptions did I enjoy. The Vow was one of those exceptions. I think the whole 'based on a true story' or 'based on a real person' sub-genre is very unpredictable because Hollywood loves to make all sorts of changes to make the film more marketable. And so the real story may be lost in scripting and direction. However, this film was sincere, and even though there were definitely some changes to the actual events and dumbing down of the christian elements, I think it has some warm moments and heartbreaking scenes/dialogue that captured the reality the real couple went through.

Rating: 8.5/10. Recommendation: Watch once or twice, and also read the story behind the movie.


The Secret World of Arrietty

This was the first of Hayao Miyazaki's films that he did not actually direct. I've actually already looked at it in 2010 when the Japanese language version came out (finally putting my Dip.Lang to good use, sort of). However, I watched the English one as well since the dubbing effort is critical in transferring the effectiveness of the film to western audiences without losing the Japanese touch. I liked how intricate the movie was, seeing how all the borrowers interact with the relatively giant worlds, there was quite a bit of thought put into all the details and daily life routines which in my opinion is what made Miyazaki's earlier work so successful. However the story is a bit too quirky, sometimes hard to follow and the setting much more contemporary, which makes the film's world harder to buy. The translation/dubbing is okay but I would say the Japanese version is superior. And why are they called Borrowers? They never return anything!

Rating: 6/10 for English version, 7.5/10 for Japanese version. Recommendation: Watch once, then watch the Miyazaki's older works (Howl's Moving Castle and earlier)


The Lorax

It sucked. The animation was nothing new, the character was more annoying than whimsical simplicity. I think Dr Seuss is rolling in his grave. It doesn't treat children with much respect and thinks they aren't smart enough without being littered more visual 'clues'. The only thing I would say is a plus is that they did manage to stay faithful in the design of the visuals and the main character, but barely.

Rating 4/10. Recommendation: Don't bother.


A Thousand Words

I think Eddie Murphy has really really past his prime now. All his more recent films, especially the comedy ones, are just not funny. The jokes are recycled, his movies' premises are interesting but not exploited well, and a lot of the scripts seem very forced. This movie is no exception.

Rating 3/10.

Recommndation: Don't bother.


The Hunger Games

This was actually a really well crafted film. Initially it did not appeal to me for its similarity to Battle Royale in its premise. However looking back I have to say they are very different: the children in Battle Royale were high school classmates, having known each other, dated each other and studied together for years (in Japan subject teachers move around classrooms so you have all the subjects with the same group of people). In this film Katniss only barely knew Pete prior to selection; the rest were all strangers and so killing each other was a slightly less big deal. Thus the stakes are different, and the psychology of the whole game is also different.

I did appreciate (but not exactly like) how bizarre and extravegant the elites are, but I don't agree with most of the professional critics who said Jennifer Lawrence did a spectacular job portraying Katniss. She's definitely more expressive than Kirsten Stewert in Twilight (Bella), but falling far short of many other young actresses (Emma Thompson and Chloe Grace Moretz to name a couple). I liked her work in X-Men: First Class a bit better. But nonetheless the movie actually passed the tests in my opinion, and is definitely a better brain food for teens and young adults than a few other franchises in this 'niche'.

Rating: 7.5/10. Recommendation: Watch once or twice, then read the 3 books before the sequel comes out.


The Avengers

I don't care whether Peter Jackson's Hobbit movie is going to be good or not. THIS WAS MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF THE YEAR!!! And judging by online polls and many other critics' reviews, the favorite movie of millions of other moviegoers as well. I didn't actually grow up reading Marvel comics (was more into Manga/Anime) but I think that there has never been a movie that was as anticipated as this one in my lifetime. They literally made 6 other movies to build up to this one! That's not just a huge gamble financially, but also sets an example of whether using smaller movies to promote bigger movies is a feasible franchise strategy.

What can I say everyone else hasn't already said? The action was great, the story is well written, the characters are surprisingly developed even if you didn't watch the other films, it's just so so funny I almost feel like there is no way they could top it in the future films! I sincerely hope this isn't their peak and now it's just sequel downhills, but for one brief moment, I think I've witnessed brilliance in the comic book/superhero genre that even non-geeks and non-nerds could appreciate and enjoy.

Rating: 10/10.

Recommendation: Watch it to your hearth's content. I'm waiting for the collector's edition. :D


Men in Black 3

This was a pleasant surprise given how disappointing MIB 2 was. This film re-captured the style and charisma of the first film, but also giving a very touching story which I think developed Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones' characters a lot more than the first two films combined. The aliens were fun as usual, the jokes were updated, although the villain was really bland, straightforward and predictable, I think the rest of the movie makes up for it threefold. John Brolin does an excellent job being young Agent K, and honestly I thought that it was some pro CGI effort to make Tommy look 30 (maybe 20) years younger. A satisfying experience, though this movie being the one I watched after The Avengers I may be more generous and in a cheerier mood when looking at this film ^_^

Rating: 8/10. Recommendation: Watch once or twice, then wait for Blu-Ray, then MIB marathon time!


Snow White and the Huntsman

The movie itself isn't half-bad. There's virtually nothing to do with the disney version and from what I heard is better than the other snow white movie that came out this year, but it's just really really hard not to watch this film and imagine Bella and Thor.

I think it was just too distracting because their character's personality is virtually a copy of their more famous roles. This made it super hard to judge this movie without drawing comparisons, but like I said it's not bad. At least it kept my gaze for the entire screening unlike some other movie.

Rating: 6.5/10. Recommendation: Watch once.


Brave

I think this is one of Pixar's weaker movies, but given how high their bar has been in the past decade, I think it's still pretty good. The story is very reminiscent of fairy tales/folklores, it's nice to see a strong and realistic heroine + family, and I think there's plenty of fun and moral lesson for kids and adults. Of all the Pixar movies I would say it's slightly better than Cars and Cars 2 but slightly worse than Monsters Inc. I don't remember the details of the movie which is rare, but the emotions I felt watching the movie was definitely positive, though I was slightly disappointed because they've been on a roll between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3.

Rating: 7.5/10.

Recommendation: Watch once, and buy Pixar collection when it comes out.


The Amazing Spider Man

I think Andrew Garfield's spiderman is definitely closer to the comics than Tobey Maguire and a lot more interesting to watch. However, I liked the original spiderman series more. I thought they were the ones responsible for opening the doors for big production companies to explore the superhero genre again since the box office and/or critical failures in the 90s. Spiderman 2 in my opinion is one of the best 5 superhero movies ever.

Also this movie had to compete against two other bigger superheros films Batman and The Avengers, and I think it's a clear loser in that respect. Having said that I did enjoy the film on its own it was just hard to embrace it when it wasn't even 10 years since I saw the 'original' one, a term I use lightly because most ideas are recycled and repackaged in Hollywood these days.

Rating: 7/10. Recommendation: Watch once or twice, but don't buy until we see how good the sequels are.


Hmm now for the real challenge: should I resort to doing Top ## lists for movies from past years/decades? Guess we'll see in the coming months!

Looper (2012)

Looper is basically the love child of Inception, Back to the Future and Bruce Willis, though a slightly inferior product. It has the intelligence and the 'continuous revelation' style of storytelling as Inception, it tries to tackle the semantics of time travel, all the while delivering the virtually mindless action of people shooting at Bruce. I think by this movie he has probably starred in the same role over 50 movies, the only difference this time is that he used guns more than his body for the fights. In fact he's basically just playing John McClane in this movie, though he actually does die. I am growing tired of his character in the genre, but I don't see many better alternatives in the horizon so I'll just smile when the director subtly pokes fun at Bruce's other movies.

<Spoiler Alert>

I enjoyed the film during the screening though the second and third act felt really uneven in its pacing as well as the overall atmosphere. The opening shot was brilliant, and was just that: Young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shoots his mark right on schedule, no hesitation; like a boss. Those first 2 minutes of the movie basically set the tone for the first act. It was shocking, it was cold, it was exactly what the trailers indicated the film would be like.

Unlike Total Recall, which shows us its vision of the future, Looper tells us through Joe's monologue, and through an almost POV approach to establish the environment where the fights and climax are (where we expect) to take place later. The future portrayed is perhaps closer to home but we mostly see two extremes: the slum-like, crime-infested underworld of urban city, and the traditional farmland lightly fashioned with hovering watering systems that would make FarmVille enthusiasts (addicts) jealous.

In this respect I think the film doesn't do very well, at least in the sense of creating a conceivable future. There is little explanation of why the future from the perspective of the plot's setting becomes seemingly totalarian where no one can escape the eyes of the government or law enforcement (imagine Google becoming the world leader and abolishes privacy). I say this because the whole purpose of the Looper program as described by Joe is to get rid of people in the past where killing and hiding corpses is much easier.

Unfortunately we only had one fast-tracked view of Joe's first time through the story's space time continuum (where he does kill his older self and enjoys his 30 years before being captured and sent back). It happens so fast that most people were trying more to follow Joe's 30 years than to appreciate details of the world as it progresses to the future from which old Joe is sent back. The rest of the future is left for us to imagine after a very basic description, mostly describing the crime syndicate than what the rest of the world is like. Maybe that's the idea but lets move on.

Both Willis and Gordon-Levitt's performances were good, though not great, and I honestly felt they could have shared some more dialogues and played around with the whole "how will I become you". I guess the idea was that Willis is a reformed, reborn man after having met his Chinese wife some time in the future, having been rehabilitated from recreational drugs and also ended his life as a hitman. That's another thing, if he's stopped fighting for like 7 years prior to being sent back into the past for his execution how is he still so good, taking down not only his younger self but also the entire looper organisation? I guess it's because he's BRUCE WILLIS! Ahh, beautiful 80's action cliches.

While I enjoyed this film, the movie does have problems.

The first problem I had was this whole idea of the "Rainmaker", who is basically a kid born with exceptional telekinesis ability mostly drawn out during emotional situations. I think his name was Syd or something. So old Joe, after dispatching his executioners in the future, still chooses to travel back in time so that he can kill the Rainmaker, who in 2044 was still a kid living on a farm with his stepmum/aunt. By the end of the film we learn that it is because old Joe kills his mother during the confrontation that he harbors anger and hatred, thus motivating him to step up the crime ladder and creating the Looper program. This closes the continuum's loop and prompts young Joe to kill himself to rid everyone of the horrible future that would have eventuated.

Putting aside the farfetched idea of '10% of people mutating to have telekinesis' (X-Men ripoff), if the Rainmaker does become so powerful that he not only controls all criminal activities in the future, but also destroys entire cities using his telekinesis, why didn't he send more protection for his own younger self? Or save his mum from old Joe? The science in the film's world indicates it follows the self-consistency principle of time travel the closest, so he knows whatever he changes in the past will immediately affect his future rather than branch off to another parallel timeline (i.e. there is one reality, one spacetime continuum and all paradoxes created by time travellers will resolve itself). I mean if they were okay to send back Abe permanently (head of the present day looper organisation), I would assume the Rainmaker could have given instructions to Abe to keep an eye out for, well, the film's equivalent of the anti-Christ. Just saying.

The second problem, and probably a more serious problem from a storytelling point of view, is the disconnection between the young Joe's life and the old Joe's life, especially the love interests. There were zero attempts to try and reconcile them. First we are shown Joe has a lover in the present day, whom later we discover had a child old Joe hesitates to kill. Then we are shown that Joe has a wife in the future (different girl), but then as the story progresses in the second half Joe meets and gets in bed with Sara (farm mum). We get a brief scene showing that old Joe's memories are being modified to include these encounters and yet somehow still end up meeting his future wife, but this is never addressed in the busyness of dealing with the other loopers and trying to kill Seth (the kid version of the Rainmaker).

Through most of the second act as young Joe becomes acquainted with Sara I was honestly led to believe old Joe's life was gradually eroding due to the decreasing likelihood he would follow the same retirement path. Also he was fairly clean of drugs by the climax so there wouldn't be a need for old Joe to have someone clean him up 25 years down the track! Also the fact that young Joe made out with Sara I basically assumed that old Joe would not have a future with the Chinese lady any more. I think Rian Johnson (director) was aware of this flaw in his final cut, as he does add a scene at the end where Sara closes young Joe's pocket watch without revealing the photo side. Hmm actually young Joe wouldn't have that photo yet since it's only the old Joe who has encountered her in the future, so this scene might have been pointless. Never mind.

The third and biggest annoyance to me (before I move onto nitpicking) was Kid Blue, the young looper who is head of the "gat-man" and also tries desperately to impress Abe. This character was fairly pointless in the first half, seems to be young Joe's lesser rival and a relatively high up in the organisation. Through the entire film he is ridiculed, undervalued and tossed aside by Abe because of his incompetency. He later tries to earn Abe's approval by capturing old Joe on his own, which in turn led to the death of everyone in the looper organisation except himself. And furthermore, he pursues young Joe near the farm and ends up dying. And that's his story arc finished. In fact we don't even see him die with any dramatic facial expression. He is literally gunned down and the next scene is his corpse lying somewhere in the bottom left corner of the scene since our cameraman is focusing back on both Joes. Almost like "gosh that guy was a nuisance, now back to business."

There were a few scenes which hinted at a possibly deeper relationship between Abe and Kid Blue, suggesting either that Abe is Kid Blue's older self, or that Kid Blue was Abe's first pick. However this is neither explored nor confirmed, and even when he finds Abe dead there is no establishing shot of what their relationship might have been or were. This really really bugged me because aside from the main characters he was the only other character that had strong motivations, significant dialogue and screen time, so I wanted him to be more critical to the story's development.

Actually, Kid Blue reminds me of that Andrew Brandt from Equilibrium. He basically brings the protagonist (if I can call old Joe a protagonist) into the headquarters to their detriment. However in the larger picture he is neither remembered nor important from any of the characters' perspective. But thanks to his overzealousness we managed to get Bruce Willis in the middle of a group of bad guys. He will not leave without an incident.

But most of these problems are relatively minor compared to the enjoyment the film did bring me. The idea is cool, the acting is well done, anything that replicates Inception successfully deserves respect, and having Bruce Willis single-handedly take down all the bad guys, always a pleasure. I would say I enjoyed this more than the other films I've seen this year (except The Avengers), though far less than the films I believe it to be inspired by. Ultimately, time travel stories are hard to get right, if ever, and when you put Bruce Willis in the middle of it you know things are going to get ugly, but mostly in a good way.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Recommendation: Watch once at the movies, then wait for the DVD to go on sale.


Extra nitpicks:

• there are a few nudity/sexy scenes that were completely unnecessary, especially the one that helps establish the intimate relationship between young Joe and his stripper girlfriend. It actually complicated the story in a bad way since we discover later that she actually has a son. Is that son young Joe's or some other guy's. If it's the latter did Joe know about it? They don't resolve this arc and so it becomes one of many questions that is neither philosophically nor socially challenging. It becomes more like a TV soap's episodic cliffhanger to try and reel you in for the next episode, which there won't be any since young Joe is dead.
• the film's future world is confusing. We get told that it's virtually impossible to dispose of a body and not get tracked. Technically sending someone back in time is the same as kidnapping them and shooting them into space on a one-way rocket, right? I mean their phyiscal presence seems to be what's being tracked and even if they can't be found the fact that they're missing means an investigation would still be underway. Weird.
• the film's future world is really confusing. If the Rainmaker has such a powerful crime syndicate why can't they change how the tracking program works so that the people they want to eliminate are not tracked/monitored by the police or something? I mean if they can level cities at will I'm sure changing a few government policies isn't too much to ask for!
• the film's future world is also kind of dumb. Why would they send the people they want to eliminate back in time by only 30 years!?!? Yes, technically they don't exist yet so there's a legal looperhole. But if the bodies aren't disposed of properly, or if one of their marks escapes (like in the movie), they would leave something that could be traced, recorded, documented etc. Then 30 years in the future when the person goes missing they could just dig up the archives to look for anomalies in the past.
  
  If I were this crime organisation and needed to eliminate people via time-travel I would just send them back 100000 years before civilization was around, so that no matter what they did they were dead, and you'd save the money you spent paying those hitman whose job was just to shoot whatever popped up on the rug. But I guess if they did that, we wouldn't have this movie :)