In the past, I have talked about that dead space between Christmas and the summer movie season. Last year, that dead zone was almost non-existent, and the best that I can tell, this year it was limited to one weekend (Jan. 3, when no new movies were released).
I think Hollywood is taking a tip from TV land. In the old days, the TV season started in the fall and lasted all winter long, then reruns played throughout the spring and summer.
In recent years, seasons are shorter, and shuffled so that when one show is set to go into reruns, another series is ready to run new episodes again. There is no more “rerun season.”
Hollywood seems to have taken this to heart. The normal pre-Holiday season dead zone was missing from last year’s box office, and it doesn’t look like the pre-summer dead season is coming either. You could almost say it was “Taken” away.
“Taken” is an action thriller that stars Liam Neeson. As Bryan Mills, former longhaired Jedi and Batman Begins villain, Neeson plays an ex-CIA “preventer” going after a gang of Albanian slavers who have kidnapped his daughter.
Mills spent most of his daughter’s life “preventing bad things from happening” in Europe. Now divorced, he has retired to California to be closer to her.
However, the 17-year-old Kim (Maggie Grace) is not the little girl he remembers, and is off to visit Paris with her girlfriend. The trip to Paris turns into a nightmare when they are kidnapped.
Now, imagine it was your daughter that was kidnapped. What would you do? What could you do?
Imagine if you were a CIA assassin, had contacts throughout Europe and an array of deadly skills that would make Jason Bourne and James Bond envious. What would you do then?
Mills tears a gaping hole in the Paris underworld to rescue his daughter.
In fact, one of the things that strikes you in this movie is the complete and utter ruthlessness of Mills. He has one concern, and maybe his only redeeming quality, and that is to rescue his daughter.
Anything or anyone that gets in his way is struck down in the most efficient and often brutal way possible. This is no “punch’em in the face and knock them out” action movie. This is a strangle, stab, shoot, “punch ‘em in the throat and kill them” movie.
Moreover, Neeson brings this to life with chilling effect. He really makes you believe that he would destroy anyone who even jaywalked between him and baby girl. Talk about tough love; “Taken” takes the idea to an entirely new level.
(Originally Published in the Myrtle Beach Herald)
