Taken

A group of actors is about to become unemployed.

There’s a certain kind of actor out there – you know the type. A thespian like Mark Dacascos, say, or Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. This guy is a working actor, he’s paying the bills, and he’s turning out one direct-to-video feature after another. In one film, he’s an ex-soldier out for revenge. In another, a kung fu master come down from the mountaintop to get the precious MacGuffin. In yet another, he’s a cop, or a spy, or an accountant who works out a lot. It’s all the same, and it all pays the bills: the actor sneers, he shoots, he kicks people in the face. Then he goes home, cashes his check, and everybody’s happy.

And then, a Liam Neeson comes along. An Academy Award nominee. A marquee name. Darkman, for Pete’s sake! And he makes a movie like TAKEN, in which he plays an ex-CIA agent who is both Out for Revenge and Getting the MacGuffin. Not only does he act the pants off of everyone else in the genre, but it turns out he’s got some pretty good moves in the stunt department, to boot. Hey, Liam, bit of advice: it’s unwise to enter these guys’ territory. They may be desperate men.

TAKEN, then, serves as an exercise in the farfetched: what happens when you take a capable, respected actor, surround him with stuntmen, and tell him to go kick some ass? I’ll tell you what happens: asses get kicked, and they kicked by a guy whose conviction the audience never thinks to question. Liam Neeson takes TAKEN, your standard, DTV-type revenge / MacGuffin thriller, and elevates it to something more: a study in desperation, in love, and in high-class ass-kickery the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

In the process, however, TAKEN calls the entire future of the DTV thriller into question. Will Judi Dench soon play an edge – of – retirement assassin out to do one … last … job? When can we expect Sean Penn to show us his chops as an idealistic former cop who must kickbox his way through a corrupt police force to avenge his former partner? Personally, I’m holding out for the mother lode: Kate Winslet as a post-apocalyptic savior, preferably one with a totally awesome car, or maybe eyes that blink sideways.

It’s only a matter of time. But when that day comes, a certain class of actor will be out of work. It’ll be Neeson’s fault. Perhaps he can hire a few members of the old cadre as bodyguards.

The Wackness

In THE WACKNESS, Ben Kingsley counsels young Josh Peck, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't listen to Dylan and who doesn't smoke weed."

I don't listen to Dylan. I don't smoke weed. I didn't trust Ben Kingsley, either.

This is a movie about people from a different universe, one in which the rules of society as I understand them don't exist. They ingest enormous amounts of drugs. They approach sex with damaging casualness. They speak in a foreign language and listen to music that's a mystery to me. In fact, there's not one single character in this film that I could relate to, one person who didn't feel like an example of a type, but rather a complete human being. I've seen movies about murderous, medieval Huns with whom I could relate more than I could anyone in THE WACKNESS.

This movie was an audience favorite at Sundance. CHUD's Devin Faraci loved it. I don't get the appeal, not at all. THE WACKNESS does part of what movies are supposed to do, in that it takes me to a different place and time, introduces me to different people, and puts me in their shoes. But the shoes didn't fit, and the film couldn't sell them to me.

Bummer.

X-Men: The Last Stand

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND makes up for its abundance of fireworks by minimizing its sense of fun.

The first two X-Men movies weren't masterpieces, but they rocked along reasonably well. They had some laughs, they had some fights, they had some things to think about. X3 has no laughs, too many fights, and enough things to think about for at least three breathless college essays.

The whole thing just feels like an exercise in action filmmaking, but a film like THE HIDDEN BLADE so eclipses it even in purely action-related terms that it can't fully succed even in that limited arena.

X3 is a mediocrity. I can't muster up much more to say about it than that.