Taken

This post is a commentary on the movie Taken, featuring Liam Neeson. I feel like I need to express what is on my mind, and simply get it out and done with so I can get back to your regularly scheduled programming. This is not a review of the film, which I thought was excellent, carrying an incredible intensity all the way through till the end. I am instead focusing on the on how I continued to process the film after watching it. This WILL contain spoilers.

Bluster is one of the most popular hobbies in the South, where I grew up. Men like to puff up their chest and make impossible declarations. “The man who messes with my daughter better not want his penis any more.” Or perhaps, “I’ve got 100 acres, ain’t nobody gonna find him.” In Taken, Liam Neeson’s Bryan is antithesis. There is no bluster, simply a determined ruthlessness, combined with the knowledge that not only will he do anything, but he is fully capable of the anything.

Taken carreis with it a simple moral code: in defense of one’s daughter, everything is permitted. It is readily apparent throughout the movie that Bryan is an avenging angel, who will get his daughter back, and will destroy everyone in his path. You quickly get tossed into the space of watching the long trail of gangster and goons with a sort of glee, knowing all of them are going to resist this irresistible force, and wondering simply how they will meet their end. Bryan cuts an enormous swath of destruction, leaving about forty bodies in his wake, and several more maimed for life. He works with nihilistic efficiency, and a smoldering fury that frequently edges into the sociopathic, as he kills, multilates, murders, executes, and tortures anyone who even is close to those hindering him.

To the film’s credit, it never flinches from Bryan’s cruelty, or apologizes for it. The movie depicts it all faithfully while trying to avoid being gratuitous. But it also forces the audience to occaisionally take a step and consider the havoc that Bryan is wreaking simply by virtue of how shockingly depraved the actions are. The first is when he finds Marko, the man that kidnapped his daughter, and his “interrogation” of this man consist of two spikes stabbed into his thighs, and hooking these spikes up to the light switch. We are treated to a graphic depiction of how painful the electricity is until Marko finally breaks and confesses what he has done. Bryan leaves the room, turning the power back on, and leaving Marko to writhe in agony for however long it will take for his body to shut down. While Marko is indisputably evil, having kidnapped Bryan’s daughter, and sold her to be auctioned off as a prostitute, it is impossible for the viewer to simply watching his body clenched in agony with the Homecoming Day cheerleading attitude we expect when we talk about this. The coldness with which Bryan leaves the room leaves one with a certain taste of sociopathy in his actions.

This hint gets reinforced soon after, when he goes to the home of the French intellegence officer, Jean-Claude, he knew from some point in his never-quite-explained past. As they talk over dinner, Jean-Claude’s wife attempting to be a gracious host, Bryan starts by launching accusations of embarassing frankness. The moment of discomfort shifts into another zone when Jean-Claude pulls a gun on Bryan at the dinner table. Bryan sprinkles the bullets from the pistol onto the table, showing he has already disarmed the weapon, then draws his own sidearm and shoots Jean-Claude’s wife. As Jean-Claude rushes to her aide, Bryan explains that Jean-Claude has the choice to turn on the people that bribed him, or Bryan will execute them both.

This moment simply shocks the conscience, and is impossible to reconcile. Here the audience is forced to pull back a bit from the protagonist. Even if you could justify Marko’s fate, for the moment you were watching the movie, it is impossible to defend, to one’s own morals, the lengths Bryan has now chosen to go to. From here, he takes his swatch of destruction through two more venues, eventually rescuing his daughter. After their tearful reunion, the two are then seen at LAX, with Bryan reuniting her with his ex-wife and her husband. From here, Bryan simply continues home, and later treats his daughter to a belated birthday surprise. Immediately, the viewer is left stunned that Bryan has not been led away in handcuffs, is not rotting in prison, or in any other way being held to account for the forty-odd bodies, numerous destroyed cars, and one destroyed building (okay, it was a trailer) he left behind in Paris. Further, anyone who has ever watch a mob movie knows what happens when you anger the powers of the underworld, who have chosen here merely to shrug their shoulders and lick their wounds. It’s a jarring reminder that in Taken, everything is permitted. This is the movie’s challenge to the viewers, and their beer-can bravado.