Cold Pursuit (2019)

With variable returns beginning from Taken, the indisputably finest of the genre, Liam Neeson has become Hollywood’s go-to for grizzled revenge thrillers. While Cold Pursuit has been marketed as the next high-concept riff on an old classic – Liam Neeson kills people with a snowplow, the posters promise – the end result is something closer to Fargo than Taken, more dark comedy than dark night of the soul, though Neeson seems not to know it.

Neeson stars as Nels Coxman, snowplow driver and citizen of the year in Kehoe, Colorado. When his son turns up dead of a heroin overdose, Nels senses a darker truth and sets out for revenge on the drug dealers who killed his boy, working his way to the Viking (Tom Bateman) at the top of the distribution ladder.

In my journey toward avoiding trailers altogether (I’ve worked my way up to ignoring the “final trailers,” often riddled with spoilers), I admit I never saw a promo for Cold Pursuit and only knew of its existence because of early posters that showed Liam Neeson dragging a body past a snowplow. “I’m in,” I said confidently, but now that I’ve come out of the theater, I’m not exactly sure what I had gotten into in the first place. Cold Pursuit is an odd movie with a meticulously tuned sense of what is funny, what is conventional, and what constitutes finality. “What the hell was that movie?” I asked when the credits rolled, and I genuinely don’t know what to make of it. I enjoyed it, certainly, and got a fair dose of thrills from Neeson’s ability to turn mundane vengeance into Shakespearean violence. But at the same time I felt myself being recalibrated over the course of the movie, aghast at an early gag about morgue equipment but gradually realizing that the whole film finds humor in offbeat interruptions, as in a gag of magnifying returns where the names of the deceased appear as title cards. 

The film continues a surprising number of subplots, many of which overwhelm Neeson’s by the end of the film, and it’s in these side stories that the film stretches its dark comedic wings. When the film’s focus is on Nels Coxman and his drive for revenge, it’s a mostly straight action thriller; Liam finds a baddie, interrogates him with varying degrees of roughness, and executes him with brutal precision. Elsewhere in the film, though, mobsters struggle with fantasy football drafts, quarrel over who’s on body disposal duty, and take to the ski slopes because they were “born to fly.” One senses that Neeson was starring in one film – and perhaps the finest joke of all is that he is deadly serious in ways the rest of the film steadfastly refuses to be, that Neeson persisted in Taken form when the film called for Fargo. 

Cold Pursuit is director Hans Petter Moland’s American debut, remaking his Norwegian film, and perhaps the Scandinavian sensibility that gave us The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (famously marketed as the “feel-bad Christmas movie” for American audiences) is to blame for this mad experiment in tonal shifts. It’s certainly not conventional American fare and can catch a moviegoer off-guard if they, like yours truly, enter a theater unaware. And yet, as a moviegoer increasingly aware of his own idiosyncratic sensibilities, there is something undeniably appealing about a director throwing caution to the wind and making a film that only he could have made. One could imagine a version of this film from the Taken crowd that would have been exactly what I expected, for better or for worse. So in that sense, Cold Pursuit earns my respect for giving me something I didn’t expect but ended up liking all the same.

Cold Pursuit is rated R for “strong violence, drug material, and some language including sexual references.” Directed by Hans Petter Moland. Written by Frank Baldwin. Based on the film Kraftidioten by Hans Petter Moland. Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, Domenick Lombardozzi, John Doman, and Tom Jackson.

Silence (2016)

In thirteen years, I’ve not missed a single Scorsese theatrical release. In fact, most of them I’ve attended more than once. (The only other director who’s earned that degree of loyalty, you may be unsurprised to learn, is Christopher Nolan, who I’ve followed for twelve.) You should know – if you don’t already – that Martin Scorsese directed my all-time favorite film, The Departed, that I’ve never really been disappointed by him, and that I consider him easily one of the greatest and most reliable living film directors. Perhaps, then, I’m a little biased, but I contend that his latest, Silence, is an accomplished feat, a moody and mature contemplation of many of the themes that have dogged Scorsese throughout his oeuvre.

Based on the Shusaku Endo novel, Silence finds Jesuit missionaries Rodrigues and Garrpe (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) journeying to seventeenth-century Japan to investigate reports that their predecessor and mentor Ferreira (Liam Neeson) has turned apostate and renounced the church. In the course of their investigation, they find a community of Kakure Kirishitan (“hidden Christians”) persecuted by a local inquisitor and his interpreter (Issei Ogata and Tadanobu Asano), testing their faith and demanding more of them than they may be prepared to give.

Two of Scorsese’s dominant themes have been the struggles of faith and the tensions of duty; in Goodfellas, Henry Hill labored under his obligations to his criminal friends, while Scorsese acquired some notoriety for the inquisitive The Last Temptation of Christ. And in The Departed, a film rife with Catholic guilt and misplaced paternalism, the blurred line between cops and criminals becomes too much for both protagonist Billy Costigan and antagonist Colin Sullivan. In Silence, our protagonists have their faiths tested in more severe ways, facing torture and death in a way that’s almost biblical. Silence has long been a passion project of Scorsese’s, and I mean that in several ways, as the Jesuit priests face their own Christ-like trials, compared alternately to Gethsemane and to the crucifixion.

At two hours and forty minutes, Silence will likely test moviegoers as well; Scorsese movies have always been something of an endurance test (his last, The Wolf of Wall Street, topped three hours), but usually they’re padded out with flashy editing, nonstop dialogue, and at least one Rolling Stones track. With Silence, none of those is on display; indeed, this is one of Scorsese’s least stylized, most subdued works – and it’s also among his most mature and most contemplative. At 74 years old, Scorsese has a clear and unapologetic reverence for the source material and the thematic content of Silence, and as Rodrigues undergoes his trials, we can sense something of Scorsese’s own wrestling with his faith amid the apparent silence of God.

As Scorsese seems to extract himself from the equation, directing in a subtle manner with only a few trademark quirks on display, Andrew Garfield is proving to have quite a year for himself. (And, strikingly enough, between this and Hacksaw Ridge, he’s not had much luck going to Japan.) His performance of Rodrigues as religiously challenged, horrorstruck by the conflict between his religious obligation and his sense of duty to the faithful, is sophisticated in a way that makes me worry he’ll split the Best Actor vote for himself with Hacksaw Ridge. The film’s Japanese cast – particularly Ogata, who’s been rightly compared to Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds – more than hold their own opposite their western counterparts, and in some ways with the harder job as their roles are largely silent. And Neeson, as ever, is brokenheartedly stoic as the alleged apostate, whose appearance in the third act layers the narrative with pathos of a surprisingly tragic dimension.

As a fan of the 1966 novel, I had wondered how the film would capture the multiplicity of narrators in the book, but I needn’t have worried. Scorsese pulls it off beautifully, opting for meditation over exposition. But where the novel ended somewhat optimistically, redemptive in a way that reaffirmed the reader’s faith, Scorsese continues the story for a few more minutes, allowing the audience to ask whether Silence is actually a tragedy, the despair of a man who wonders whether God has been silent all along. Or do we too hear the voice of God in the silences of Silence?

Silence is rated R for “some disturbing violent content.” Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese. Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo. Starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Issei Ogata, Yôsuke Kubozuka, Ciarán Hinds, and Liam Neeson.

Taken 3 (2015)

If I were the kind of reviewer who did video or audio reviews, my write-up of Taken 3 would begin with a very clear and audible sigh of disappointment.  I’m not sure with whom or what I’m most disappointed – the film itself, the people who created it without much regard for it actually being a proper Taken film, or myself for possessing expectations some would consider to be unreasonable for a film bearing the alternative title Tak3n.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), he of the “particular set of skills,” is framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen).  Pursued by a police inspector (Forest Whitaker) who doesn’t take his skills for granted, Bryan works to clear his name, identify those responsible, and protect his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).

As repetitive it was, though not as offensively so as the brutally unnecessary The Hangover 2, Taken 2 established a formula for this sort of thing – someone goes to Europe, said someone gets “taken,” and Liam Neeson has to save them, usually with some artificial time constraint, and dismantle an unprecedented amount of foreigners to do so.  As patently silly as that premise sounds on paper, there’s something alchemical about the first Taken which made it solidly one of my favorite action movies of all time.

What we have here is a film that doesn’t do any of those things.  Instead, Taken 3 is formulaic in another direction, aligning it more closely with a very generic action film premise, the wrongfully accused protagonist against all the odds.  Aside from the fact that Bryan buys his daughter a large and not-age-appropriate gift at the beginning, there’s little in this character that resembles the man we met in the first film.  Even his special skills are supplanted by an overemphasis on technological research and a “secret hideout” in which Bryan’s friends do most of the skilled labor.

Taken 3 swaps out all of what made the franchise distinct with a script that could be substituted for any action hero at all.  Even the architecture of the film – man being framed – doesn’t fit with the Taken persona.  Forest Whitaker’s cop character seems out of place, too; he walks around reminding us how good Bryan was in the first two films, but he’s still two steps behind while running what appears to be his own parallel investigation into Lenore’s murder which revolves around, bizarrely of all, eating bagels found as evidence at the crime scene.

The film also does a dismal job of stepping all over the character of Kim.  Where Taken 2 had done a nice bit of character development by having Kim more actively involved in the action sequences and rescue mission, Taken 3 reduces her to bystander and then, as the film draws to a close, a sort of obligatory hostage.  To top it all off, she’s pregnant, a plot point which has nothing to do other than invoke paternalistic feelings of protectiveness, a very retrograde approach to female characters.  Much of the film feels dated, including its soundtrack and action editing, but the inability to do something at least a little creative/progressive with Kim is discouraging.

Taken 3 steps away from its immediate predecessor in another dispiriting way when it completely fails to follow up on what I felt was the best part of Taken 2, the beat in which Bryan wearily admitted, “I am tired of it all.”  I loved the idea of a man drawn begrudgingly into an endless cycle of violence and bloodshed, a man who just wanted to settle down with what was left of his family.  Instead, when the plot of Taken 3 really ramps up, Bryan doesn’t show any of that fatigue.  His revenge-o-meter goes from zero to sixty without hesitation, an inconsistency all the more surprising since Olivier Megaton directed both Taken 2 and 3 yet seems to have overlooked what could have made this film stand apart from all the other generic action outings. 

Then there’s the litany of actual film offenses, those moments of flawed logic and absurdities that stretch the boundaries of even the most suspended of beliefs.  The film includes, among other scenes that got me to laugh but not in a good way, a corpse whose wounds do not bleed and indeed which manage to heal postmortem, the collection of evidence that has no material value for the plot, and a Porsche which can outrun a small aircraft on takeoff.  Granted, the first film gave Bryan Mills near-superheroic abilities, but that’s something intrinsic to the character and, I’d argue, somewhat essential in the genre.  Don’t even get me started on the headscratcher of the plot, which is unnecessarily complex in a way that manages to be both predictable and borderline incomprehensible.

Taken 3 isn’t actually bad – it’s engaging enough and Neeson is still enjoyably gruff – but it is preposterous and, I think, ultimately unnecessary.  The real joy of Taken was that it felt fresh and brisk, and stretching it out over the course of two more films just doesn’t add enough to the equation to justify more movies.  My final analysis is that I want to run into the arms of the original Taken and hope that it hasn’t been sullied in the stretching.

Taken 3 is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, and for brief strong language.”  The same standard of bloodless but very physical violence continues here, with gunshots, stabbings, and visceral punches.  Taken 3 has more car chases than the other films, as well as one F-word.

Friends, 2015 is not off to a good start.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Star Wars prequels should have been a trilogy to match the scope of the original, heralded as new classics to stand proudly beside the old in telling the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker as he becomes Darth Vader.  Instead, the trilogy begins with The Phantom Menace, a cartoonish mess of a movie littered with creative missteps, shoddy screenwriting, and an apparent stubborn insistence on annoying the audience.

Here’s what we know, though you’ll have to muddle through some truly murky exposition to get there:  Two Jedi Knights, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are sent to Naboo to mediate a trade dispute between the Trade Federation and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman).  When negotiations go sour, the Jedi and the Queen escape to Tatooine, where they meet young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) while the power of the Dark Side gathers around them...

Perhaps The Phantom Menace was a case of superlative expectations; the promise of the untold story of Darth Vader, arguably the most recognizable character in all of cinema, is a tantalizing one.  Perhaps we asked too much?  Unfortunately, no:  on rewatching the film with my ambitions severely lowered, I still found myself disappointed by The Phantom Menace.  The film is cluttered with dispiriting indications that George Lucas had lost his touch.  To begin, the film has no central protagonist, nor a clear antagonist (we never learn, for example, what “the phantom menace” actually is).  There’s a sense that Darth Sidious, master of the Dark Side of the Force, is the primary villain, though his motives and behavior are baffling.  It seems that his plan is to guarantee that he becomes the Emperor in time for the events of the Original Trilogy, which doesn’t actually make logical sense since these are prequels.

I could stop the review right there, because that sentence tells you everything you need to know about The Phantom Menace.  This film, and indeed the entirety of the Prequel Trilogy, proceeds very much like a paint-by-numbers series of events designed to set the stage for Episode IV, with little to no investment in the narrative itself.  There is no passion, no enthusiasm, no attempt to engage the audience beyond the superficial and frankly alienating special effects.  Little in the film seems real (more on that later), and consequently nothing seems to matter; Darth Maul aside, the film’s villains provide no threat to its heroes, and the whole movie proceeds like a very thinly written cartoon designed to sell toys rather than advance a plot.

If there is any passion in the film, it’s in Lucas’s love affair with his computer.  One senses that Lucas is truly astonished by the technical capabilities available to him – and rightly so.  As foul a character as Jar Jar Binks is, the digital effects used to create him are really quite amazing, even fifteen years after the fact.  He remains, however, the film’s greatest sin, an entirely useless character who exists solely to annoy the audience.  Jar Jar Binks serves no plot function and stumbles through the film via sheer dumb luck; more problematic in a narrative sense, he’s very close to an invisible friend, because most of the characters seem irritated by him and often choose to avoid him.  You could digitally erase him from most scenes and not tell the difference.

There are, to be fair, a few things that The Phantom Menace does defensibly well.  The first of these is the stellar score by John Williams, which I’ll argue throughout the day is the real star of the Prequel Trilogy.  When the film falls flat, as it often does, Williams’s music comes in to give us a sense of humanity, of breathlessness, of the personality the film so desperately lacks.  Williams creates a musical universe with plenty of new elements but with enough leitmotifs from the Original Trilogy to be recognizable.  In fact, that’s the template the entire Prequel Trilogy should have followed.

The film also includes two solid and memorable action sequences – the podrace and the climactic lightsaber battle.  The former shows a successful use of the CGI technology to create an engaging setpiece – which, to be sure, it is, being largely tangential to the plot but finally a relief after all the political posturing that precedes it.  The lightsaber duel is probably the best part of the film, though you’ll have to wade through nearly two hours of plodding politics; it’s exciting, it’s something we hadn’t seen before (Darth Maul with the double-bladed saber especially), and the Williams track “Duel of the Fates” is first-rate.

But a few good pieces aren’t enough to make The Phantom Menace a success.  In fact, it’s really only required viewing for the completist, and at any rate it’s certainly not the Star Wars film with which to introduce the franchise.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is rated PG for “sci-fi action/violence.”  There are explosions, laser blasts, lightsaber fights (with two deaths, seen clearly but not graphically), and a thrilling chase sequence in which several racers are presumed to die in explosions.  Most of the violence deals with robots.

We’ll be back in two hours with Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones!

Non-Stop (2014)

Mark Kermode, a British film critic with whom I find myself agreeing more often than not, said of Taken, “It is the kind of movie that used to be the second-bill on a kind of junky double-bill at a drive-in and now somehow has managed to make it to the big screen with a big name.”  Indeed, that big name, Liam Neeson, has made a career of elevating otherwise B-movie action films.  Why Kermode doesn’t chalk up to Neeson the victories of Taken and its children is anyone’s guess, because it’s the clearest reason for Non-Stop to exist, let alone to succeed.

Neeson stars as federal air marshal Bill Marks (a name you won’t forget because of the way it’s growled throughout) on a red-eye transatlantic flight.  Midway over the ocean, Marks receives a series of texts from a terrorist who promises to kill a passenger every twenty minutes – and, we soon learn, frame Marks in the process.  But we know it’s not all as easy as that, and Neeson does not disappoint in his resilience, very nearly hijacking the flight in an attempt to clear his name.

Let’s establish one thing straightaway – Non-Stop is not Taken.  It’s a far cry from Pierre Morel’s masterful action film, which still manages to thrill after all these years.  In fact, I might be more generous toward Non-Stop precisely because its star makes some of the script’s sins forgivable, or at least bearable.  Neeson is as always a stalwart and reliable action star, gravelly and determined.  He communicates both desperation and dedication in equal parts, allowing us to feel the urgency without fully doubting his abilities.

Bill Marks may share a set of initials with Taken’s Bryan Mills, but he lacks that critical “set of skills” with which the latter might have quickly resolved the crisis.  Instead, the script saddles him with textbook substance abuse and past family trauma, but it’s to Neeson’s credit that he pulls off these rather generic gestures toward characterization and pulls in a convincing portrait of a troubled man pushed to his limits.

Where Non-Stop misses the bar set by Taken is largely everywhere else in its filmmaking.  At 110 minutes, the film feels longer than it needed to be, in part because Bill Marks is air-marshaling aboard a flight chock overfull of narrative detours.  One even suspects that Julianne Moore was cast because of her hair color as a literal personified red herring.  The problem is that the film’s reliance on the classic locked-room formula means that Bill’s initial hunches are necessarily wrong; this puts the audience in the position of being fully aware of the misdirections at work, and the film never really tries to counteract our sense of those sleights of hand.  Consequently, the film feels in a bit of a holding pattern while the intuitive audience members look for the real clues behind the foreground.  Neeson’s performance is compelling, very much enough to hold your attention, but on reflection it’s very much a B-movie superstructure.

The film is, however, at its best when it surrenders to what might be considered the “dumb fun” action of the third reel, when the story takes on a ticking plot twist and a spiraling set of revelations.  Non-Stop does suffer from exposition-heavy villain monologuing, but it counterbalances with flashy fistfights and even a bit of high-altitude/high-stakes gunplay.  Ultimately, then, Non-Stop succeeds or fails based on how highly you value the screen presence of Liam Neeson.  For this filmgoer, it’s a fun enough diversion though not a close contender for greatness.

Non-Stop is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of action and violence, some language, sensuality and drug references.”  There are a few deaths on the plane as the terrorist makes good on the every-twenty-minutes threat.  A younger passenger is seen flirting with two older men, and IMDb reports two F-words (only one of which I recall).

While The Cinema King enjoys spring break, it’s the perfect opportunity for multiple reviews.  So come back on Thursday for my take on Mr. Peabody & Sherman!

Monday at the Movies - February 25, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, two films that (spoiler warning) should have been better.

The Grey (2012) – Somewhere between The Phantom Menace and Taken, Liam Neeson turned into a proper action hero to the point where he literally ran The A-Team.  Neeson rapidly developed a steady fanbase ready to follow him into any vehicle.  And the premise of The Grey, as initially marketed, is as tempting as any the man could possibly have accepted; the original trailers billed the film as, essentially, “Taken with wolves.”  “Come see Liam Neeson punch wolves,” the trailers promised, but when I finally caught up to the movie I got something entirely different – a somber character study of a suicidal survivalist up against a natural embodiment of death.  Neeson stars as the leader of a group of plane crash survivors who trek through the tundra in search of rescue, while a pack of wolves threatens their journey.  I try not to criticize a movie for being something other than what I was expecting (indeed, defying expectations is often a good thing), but The Grey was a bit misleading, promising a confrontation we never actually get.  Neeson is characteristically compelling as John Ottway, again toting a bag of skills akin to those he possessed in Taken, and his morose voiceover sells the narration, a filmic technique I often resist for telling and not showing.  Unfortunately, though, the film’s big antagonist – the wolf pack – never really looks convincing; I’m sure it’s a preemptive strike against animal cruelty folks, but the wolves are often stationary or shot in tight close-up, never giving them a proper sense of menace – or motion.  At the end of the day, Neeson turns in great work, per usual, but the film is certainly something other than what you’ve been led to believe.

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) – Grindhouse, what have ye wrought?  Once upon a time, there was a clear distinction between movies and rubbish, but after Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino did a loving riff on the B-movie genre, the lesson learned seems to have inspired tasteless filmmakers to call their work “homage” and expect to get away with it.  Hobo with a Shotgun (itself originally a Grindhouse trailer) stars Rutger Hauer, grizzly as ever, as the titular residentially-challenged vigilante who aims to reclaim the streets “one shell at a time.”  While the film claims to be a tribute to the low-budget exploitation films of the 70s and 80s, what it really amounts to is a bloody mess of a thing, oversaturated beyond visual comprehension and unrelenting in its pointless violence.  Hobo with a Shotgun never reaches past its title, never dodges the generic clichés that dominate the script, never even surprises; the film is deliberately cheap and overly juvenile, teenaged Tarantino let loose in a warehouse full of fake gore with none of the wit or self-awareness from either Planet Terror or Death Proof – or even Machete, the other Grindhouse trailer-cum-feature.  Hobo with a Shotgun substitutes fun for bloodlust, assuming that the audience will delight in the director’s mania for dismemberment; on this account, perhaps they succeed, because a base feeling of revulsion is the only human emotion (not counting boredom) that the film managed to elicit.  Maybe I’m taking this too seriously; maybe I’m just too old for this.  But there’s little that’s earnest about Hobo with a Shotgun, and it’s a colossally unwatchable beast.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Taken 2 (2012)

With Taken, Liam Neeson’s gravelly threat of a “very particular set of skills” led many filmgoers to wonder what was still waiting in that bag of tricks.  While not groundbreakingly original, Taken 2 replicates much of what worked in the first film and adds enough new material to justify the sequel treatment.

When news that a sequel was en route, audiences joked, “Who gets taken in the next one?  The mom?”  Well... yeah.  Taken 2 picks up about a year after the events of the first film, at the funeral of the Albanians killed by Bryan Mills (Neeson).  The families swear revenge on Bryan, who’s currently touring Istanbul with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).  This time, though, it’s Bryan and Lenore who are taken by the grieving father (Rade Šerbedžija) of one of Kim’s late kidnappers.  With the tables turned, Bryan uses his “skills” to coach Kim through a rescue attempt.

Don’t let the synopsis fool you, though – the star is very much still Neeson, with Grace’s role amped up to, mercifully, prevent her from being the damsel in distress once more.  While the premise isn’t wholly original, the film plays up more of Bryan’s “set of skills,” of which I’m sure this filmgoer wasn’t alone in wanting more.  While some of Bryan’s abilities defy any standard of realism, the laughter they elicit isn’t one of incredulous scorn but rather one of unforeseen inevitability.  Of course Bryan could deduce his location using only a grenade and a shoestring; he’s MacGyver by way of Jack Bauer, something the film pulls off by never letting up.

But what the film invents in Bryan’s talents, it never quite innovates beyond the formula of the first one – protective father singlehandedly defends family from evil Albanians.  Many of the scenes in the first film are reused here without new purpose.  Again we have Bryan’s trio of CIA buddies who don’t do much beyond drink beer and giggle at Bryan’s unrequited love for his ex-wife.  There’s the same framing technique of Bryan attempting to do something to help his daughter (singing lessons in the first film, driver’s license here).

Disappointingly, the one thing not replicated is the first film’s sense of humor.  While the audience is chuckling, we’re never really laughing with the characters, as we did in the first; Bryan is more humorless this time around, never really dropping one-liners or quips to accompany his kills.  This different mood is attributable in large part to the fact that Bryan doesn’t have a foil in this film as he did with Jean-Claude in the first; this lack is even more apparent since we see Jean-Claude in an early scene, never to return to him again.  If there’s a third film, I’m for bringing the French policeman back.

Instead, the focus is on the action and the deployment of unseen “skills.”  If the film could be used as a marketing tool for a seven-week course on “How to Acquire Bryan’s Skills,” it’d be successful by leaps and bounds.  The action is thrilling, unrelenting, and enviable; though humorless, the fight and chase scenes are unremitting.  Perhaps, though, the action is less compelling because of how inevitable it seems; having already seen what Bryan can do, the stakes seem somewhat lower here.  In Taken, it seemed he was up against an insurmountable 96 hours to rescue his daughter in the middle of Paris; here, though, his own abduction in Istanbul never seems more threatening than a mosquito bite.  (I haven’t yet decided if this is a strength, which allows the film to focus on how badass Bryan is, or a weakness, which doesn’t give sufficient stakes to justify a Mills-level response.)

Taken 2 does add a new thematic layer – the idea of the cyclical nature of vengeance and the inevitability that blood begets blood.  “Because I am tired of it all,” Bryan wearily intones near the film’s climax; it’s an oddly smart moment nestled inside the film, rejecting the easy popcorn-fueled “Kill ’em dead” attitude you might expect.  This is an idea I’d like to see explored more in a subsequent installment, but its inclusion here demonstrates that the filmmakers have done more than just give us a bigger version of the first film.

Ultimately, Taken 2 is a great sequel but perhaps not a great film.  Newcomers to the franchise won’t find much to thrill them and indeed might wonder, like the song goes, what’s it all about.  But fans of the original will find enough to enjoy here, a few worthwhile additions and enough amped-up repetition; where The Hangover 2 merely replicated the first film with more male nudity, Taken 2 repeats what worked and embellishes it so that it’s not a mere revision of the first.  Though it’s not an A-list cult film like the first, Taken 2 is a B-film that never disappoints.

Taken 2 is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sensuality.”  As in the first film, there are plenty of shootings, stabbings, and fist fights, but only one knife wound is bloody.  Kim has a boyfriend in this film, with whom she makes out in one scene; she runs in a bikini in another.

Monday at the Movies - October 22, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Eight of “Monday at the Movies.”  In anticipation of Wednesday’s review of Taken 2, we take a look back at the original.

Taken (2008) – Taken is the film that established Liam Neeson as an action star, and rightly so – his turn as Bryan Mills is forceful and exciting, an earnest breath of fresh air in a genre that is currently often too self-aware to be compelling.  While the first half-hour is a bit slow, it establishes Bryan’s dedication to his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), so that we can fully enjoy the final hour of the film, which revolves around Bryan’s quest to save his daughter from Albanian slave traders in Paris.  Indeed, if the film is a perfect action film, it’s on the strength of this last hour, when Bryan deploys his “very particular set of skills” to great effect.  Though the film sometimes borders on incredulous, Neeson sells it by playing it straight, never winking at the credulity-straining moments.  All of this is not to say that the film, co-written by Luc Besson, is humorless; in fact, some of the film’s best scenes are its funniest, as when Bryan impersonates a French police officer in order to identify the voice of his daughter’s captor, Marko from Tropoje.  Bryan’s scenes with Marko, as well as his scenes with corrupt French policeman Jean-Claude (a suitably smarmy Olivier Rabourdin), let Neeson show off his acting chops while also layering on enough menace to prove that Bryan’s enemies have made a huge mistake.  What the film does best, though, is keep moving during this last hour.  There are no dull bits, only scenes that push Bryan and the plot forward with a clue or direction.  It’s a surprisingly good film, an A+ action film that under any other circumstances would have been a B-movie.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Stay tuned for Wednesday’s review of the sequel, Taken 2!

Armrest Review - Batman Begins, Part Three

Welcome to the first edition of “Armrest Reviews,” a new series in which I, The Cinema King, will partner up with a fellow filmgoer to review films as we watch them.  That’s right, we’ll be writing our unexpurgated observations as we watch the film, meaning you could theoretically read the review while watching the movie and “watch along” with us.

A further welcome back for the final part of our Armrest Review of Batman Begins, the first entry in Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Trilogy."  As before, I’m joined by The Popcorn Prince, who’s been watching movies for almost as long as I have.  He’s a big Batman fan, so I’m pleased to have him by my side for the next installment of this series.  

Armrest Review - Batman Begins, Part One

Welcome to the first edition of “Armrest Reviews,” a new series in which I, The Cinema King, will partner up with a fellow filmgoer to review films as we watch them.  That’s right, we’ll be writing our unexpurgated observations as we watch the film, meaning you could theoretically read the review while watching the movie and “watch along” with us.

I’m joined by The Popcorn Prince, who’s been watching movies for almost as long as I have.  He’s a big Batman fan, so I’m pleased to have him by my side for the debut of this series.  For today’s Armrest Review, we’ll be watching Christopher Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins, the first installment in The Dark Knight Trilogy.

Cinema King:  As the opening titles come on – no credits here, no time to waste before the movie begins – a big welcome to The Popcorn Prince.  Prince, glad to have you.

Popcorn Prince:  Thanks, King.  Truly an honor to help debut a new series.  I’ve only seen this movie a few times, so it’s good to go back right before the new movie comes out.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Martin Scorsese ushered in the '00s with the start of a beautiful friendship - with Leonardo DiCaprio, who's been called Marty's new DeNiro - and this epic look at the birth of modern New York City set, like Casino (albeit in positive terms) against personal rise-and-fall stories.

Sixteen years after the murder of his father (Liam Neeson), young Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) returns to New York and his old neighborhood, the Five Points. After meeting up with old friends and new acquaintances - chief among them the pickpocket prostitute Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) - Amsterdam finds himself falling in with a gang led by his father's murderer, the man he's vowed to kill: the merciless Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (the ever-riveting Daniel Day-Lewis). Meanwhile, Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent) is coming to power, the Civil War rages, and an impending draft notice might just ignite the powderkeg that is New York City.

As with every Martin Scorsese movie reviewed here thus far (with the possible exception of Shutter Island), Gangs of New York is a mesmerizing epic, with characters and events representing larger forces and ideals of national consequence. On one side, Amsterdam and his immigrants; on the other, Bill the Butcher and his nativists. Already, then, the conflict becomes something more than just two men in battle. There are other issues at stake - what it means to be an American, what the nature of honor is, and even an examination of the political process. All of these plates Scorsese keeps spinning without ever losing sight of the immediate Amsterdam/Bill conflict, and in that respect the film succeeds.

Scorsese is like Sidney Lumet in that he reliably casts actors who turn in star performances, even if it wasn't quite expected of them (prime example for Lumet: Vin Diesel in Find Me Guilty). Gangs of New York begins a series of (to date) four films Scorsese has made with DiCaprio, and it's here that we get glimmers of the actor that DiCaprio has since become. While his performance isn't completely polished - his Irish accent slips in places - it's a giant leap forward from Titanic and a good start on the road to The Departed. Diaz, of whom I've never been a big fan, is decent here, her accent slightly more consistent and a hair/makeup job that almost lets you forget that this is the same actress responsible for Charlie's Angels. Bit players get chances to shine; Broadbent is mirthfully corrupt as Boss Tweed, Liam Neeson is a show-stealer in the film's brutal opening reel, and as an Irish cop John C. Reilly proves that he is, like all good comedians, a fine dramatic actor too. The greatest performance, unsurprisingly, is Daniel Day-Lewis's villainous turn as Bill the Butcher, a baddie of the highest order and the kind of man who could keep company with Deadwood's Al Swearengen and No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh; that Day-Lewis lost the Oscar that year is a travesty, though the early inklings one gets of his Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood suggest that this is an actor who builds on what he does until the majority sit up and take notice.

At nearly three hours, this sprawling epic might not be for everyone. Unlike the Kill Bill series, which was a non-stop wham/bam "roaring rampage of revenge," Gangs of New York is more deliberate in its pacing. After a showstopping opening (successfully ignoring Rip Torn's advice from The Larry Sanders Show, "Never open with a showstopper"), Amsterdam encounters Bill almost immediately upon returning to New York, simmering and gathering information before he makes his play for vengeance - which promptly pans out completely unpredictably, leaving Amsterdam to slink back, lick his wounds, and restrategize. And so the film contains three action pieces - beginning, first climax, and second climax - with little "action" in between; instead, the focus is on character (story vs. plot, as Scorsese would put it) and scenery - downright gorgeous scenery, with Scorsese's trademark meticulous attention to detail and a high degree of historical accuracy as far as capturing a bygone era on film.

While it's not Scorsese's absolute finest work (that honor, in my humble opinion, belongs to The Departed), Gangs of New York is arguably among his more polished pieces. If nothing else, Daniel Day-Lewis proves himself a first-rate actor as the terrifying villain of the piece.

Gangs of New York, like nearly everything else Scorsese makes, is rated R, this time "for intense strong violence, sexuality/nudity and language." There aren't really words to describe how unflinchingly brutal the violence is in this movie, as it's probably the most intensely violent of Scorsese's movies. Prostitutes are topless in three separate scenes, and the characters make brief but vulgar sexual remarks. As for language, there are more racial slurs than F-bombs, though the main justification for the R rating, I'm sure, is the downright savage violence.

The A-Team (2010)

Even though I have never watched a single episode of the television show on which it's based, I knew I wanted to see The A-Team once I saw the trailer, in which Bradley Cooper fires the machine gun turret on a tank as it plummets in midair. And the good news is that the movie is filled with moments like that, unapologetically and gleefully screaming "Summer popcorn movie!"

Liam Neeson stars as Hannibal Smith, leader of an alpha unit - or A-team - that's regarded as the best covert ops team in the armed forces. Cooper plays Face, the beauty to Hannibal's brains, every bit the ladies' man; Quinton Jackson plays B.A., the warrior/pacifist role made popular by (or which popularized, if you want to go chicken-v.-egg) Mr. T; and Sharlto Copley, late of District 9, plays the borderline-cuckoo pilot Murdock. After a mission in Iraq goes awry and with the aid of the CIA's secretive Mr. Lynch (Patrick Wilson), the A-team turns fugitive in an attempt to recover a stolen MacGuffin while creatively evading recapture at the hands of Face's former flame Charisa Sosa (Jessica Biel).

In terms of action, director Joe Carnahan gets points for imagination with his management of some of the most inventive action sequences on screen in recent years. In truth, the action is the real star of the movie: character development is negligible (though it exists, in small doses) and plot twists are present (though you'll probably see most of them coming), but it's the visuals that will make your eyes pop. If you've ever wanted to see a flying tank or a man parachute into a moving helicopter, this is the summer picture for you.

As for the acting, it fits well into the "action film" stock tropes, but the fact that the cast is made up of very talented people brings this film in above the level of "cliche." Though he's not quite as good as in Taken (review coming soon) or Love Actually, Neeson is endearing as always, showing off his sense of humor and ennabling us to have as much fun as he is; Cooper too is just as fun, having made a satisfying transformation from the slightly irritating Will Tippin on Alias to the genial star of gutbusters like The Hangover. Jackson and Copley are supporting characters in the classic tradition, not overbearing but still entertaining; my one gripe (aside from the broad strokes with which B.A. is painted, which I imagine is faithful to the spirit of the show) is that Copley's thick South African dialect slips through in a few moments, distracting from his otherwise jolly turn. And Wilson and Biel are just fine in their roles; Wilson is the stronger of the two, stepping solidly out of the schleppy shoes he normally fills for this slick and cagey part, while Biel's acting chops are overshadowed by how pretty she is (which is really the only requirement given to female co-leads in an action movie - attractiveness).

So if there's a word that encapsulates my take on The A-Team, it's "fun." It may not be credible or particularly layered, but The A-Team is a lot of fun. And that, first and foremost, is all I ask of a movie - that it be entertaining, that I feel satisfied on a gut level if not on a creative level. Fortunately, what this movie lacks in narrative imagination, it makes up for in how far it pushes the envelope of originality. There are numerous moments in the film that caused me to think to myself, "I've never seen that before," and that alone is worth the price of admission. If the action sequences were more conventional, in the vein of Michael Bay explosion-centric CGI-fests, perhaps this would only be a so-so movie. But what might have been an average action vehicle has a backbone which makes it stand up straight and be better than it ought to have been. This, in a way, is what The Losers should have been.

The A-Team isn't one of the greatest films of all time - nor does it pretend to be. What it is- and what it is successfully - is a bona fide popcorn flick that doesn't shortchange the audience on pure
visceral entertainment.

Like all good summer popcorn blockbusters, The A-Team is rated PG-13, this time "for intense sequences of action and violence throughout, language and smoking." Basically, stuff blows up, people get shot, mild profanity (no F-bombs) gets issued, and Liam Neeson smokes a cigar.

Batman Begins (2005)

It's perhaps difficult to appreciate now, three years after Batman began, what director Christopher Nolan did for the comic book movie genre. For land's sakes, folks, Bryan Singer's Superman - the all-American Boy Scout ambassador of good will - was considerably more angsty in response to the smash hit called Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, alias Batman. With a new take on the quintessential origin story, a few plausible revamps to the old rogues gallery, and a solid cast, Christopher Nolan redeemed the Batman franchise from the Schumacher debacle.

And all that with nary a Batnipple in sight.

How does every Batman origin story need to start? In the alley behind the theater where Thomas and Martha Wayne were gunned down by oft-faceless hood Joe Chill (not The Joker, Tim Burton, but nice try), right? WRONG. In typical Nolan fashion, Batman Begins toys with the audience's expectation of chronology that origin flicks like Spider-Man and Superman led us to anticipate. As Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, one of the best living actors) receives his training from Ra's al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and the League of Shadows - especially personal mentor Henri Ducard (the perma-divine Liam Neeson), his backstory is fleshed out. By the time he returns to Gotham to clean up the city and (in the words of Jeph Loeb, arguably one of the greatest Batman writers of all time) make good on his "promise on the grave of my parents to rid this city of the evil that took their lives." Among the evildoers are Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy, immaculately exuding creepiness through his eerie eyeglasses) and mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) - but there is good in Gotham. Detective Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and legal beagle Rachel Dawes (a bland Katie Holmes, the only strained link in a pitch-perfect chain), as well as Wayne associates Lucius Fox (the ever-eloquent Morgan Freeman, who just gets better at playing himself as time goes on) and butler Alfred (Michael Caine, whose moments of levity are well-appreciated), are on hand to assist in the neverending battle.

If it smacks of an ensemble cast, it's not. The focus, make no mistake, is on Bale's Dark Knight. With a cavalcade of great actors (only two of whom, I might add, hail from the continent which birthed Batman in the first place), it might be easy for any one of them to get lost in the shuffle, but thankfully each holds his own. You'll pardon the sexist language, but Holmes is out of her league here - then again, I can't think of an appropriate modern actress who wouldn't be (I say appropriate because Judi Dench would rock but might be more believable as Alfred's love interest). What helps the cast along is a whizbang screenplay by Nolan & David S. Goyer which not only sets the groundwork for a franchise but stands alone on its own merits, not the least of which is its clever use of repetition to further plot points and recall earlier hints and foreshadowings.

So the cast is mostly impeccable, the screenplay tight as a pimped-out ride. Of the direction I have only positive things to say. Nolan is a master both at intense action scenes such as a Batmobile chase scene and at moments of "arranging matches" drama as when Falcone explains the law of Gotham to Bruce. Relying on CGI to the point of nihilsm, Nolan gives his hyper-realistic take on Batman that extra layer of authenticity by showing us reality on the screen. Chicago never looked so corrupt - nor worth saving. Additionally, a score composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard deftly bounces between peaks and troughs of action. Though it's not as "listenable" as some of Zimmer's other soundtracks (such as the uber-catchy scores for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), the score here doesn't call attention to itself but rather supplements the visuals in a way that is almost subconscious.

It's an intelligent movie. The heroes are walking that fine line between good and evil, bending society's conventions and occasionally the laws to achieve real justice. The movie, in a theme that would be more fully fleshed out in its sequel, also asks where the line is and whether Batman is crossing it. The threat of escalation, too, lingers over the whole shebang, further questioning the label of "hero." And the villains are even less civil than previously; Scarecrow, for example, is less than reluctant to target innocent women and children so long as they fear him. Where Spider-Man 3 hit heavy the metaphor of "villain [Venom and the black suit] as revenge," Batman Begins is an elegant contemplation of fear and power, even if the bullet-train climax is less than wholly realistic.

And for a movie that drew applause not precisely at the end of the movie but rather 30 seconds prior to conclusion with the mere turning over of a playing card within an evidence bag, Batman Begins is a movie that needed no sequel. Certainly I won't grumble over The Dark Knight or even deem it unnecessary. But Batman Begins is more than able to survive and thrive in independence, with a complete ending that we might believe could occur in the real world.

Of course, then came a little film known as The Dark Knight, which shattered expectations - and box office records.

Mr. Nolan, I never got a chance to thank you for Batman Begins...

"And you'll never have to ."