Saturday, February 14, 2009

Now Playing: Taken

Taken in an action-movie so implausible, even I could not suspend my disbelief. I can only give it 2 out of 5 five stars: one for Liam Neeson's acting (what little we get of it); another for the beautiful location (ahhh, Paris...). There were just so many things wrong with this movie:
- Shannon (I mean Kim, I mean Maggie Grace) is her usual irritating self - it seems like this actress only has two modes, dazed and shrill. Ugh. Like in Lost, I kept hoping she would die; unlike in Lost, I was bitterly disappointed.
- One guy? One old, ex-CTU-esque, who's retired takes on a couple dozen hardened Albanian mobsters and a Sheik? and he wins? Without so much as a horrible wound? And how does he leave the country - he's just killed people, caused millions of dollars in damage, contravened French intelligence .. and he gets to fly home?
- Kim is a seventeen-year-old virgin? in California?
...don't even rent it. There are just so many better action movies to waste your time on.

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Instead let's talk about the other drama happening in the theatre... bad parenting.


Picture it: 10pm on a Friday night, a crowded movieplex. On screen, a movie rated 14A, depicting the violent and bloody take-down of a white-slave prostitution ring, featuring an auction of virgins, with plenty of swearing and gore. In your hands, popcorn for a popcorn-munching movie; beside you, an eight-year-old boy.

Wait... eight? Yeah, you read right - eight. In fact, there were three full-grown male adults and this little boy two seats over from me. I couldn't believe it. Not only was it way past any eight-year-old's bedtime... but was this really an appropriate movie? Wasn't there something else you could have attended, I wanted to ask. Something a little more his peer-level? Wasn't there an earlier show too? I couldn't help but glance over every time something lewd or graphic happened in the film (e.g., the whorehouse, the decapitation, the aforementioned auction). Gawd. And people wonder why are kids are so jaded, so aloof. I felt like smacking that man.

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