"Taken" is a stripped-down action flick offering a single, bloodlust-y pleasure: You get to spend 90 minutes watching a world-class leading man cut a totally justified swath of violence through an army of central-casting scumbags.
The movie scratches what might be called the "Man on Fire" itch, and it doesn't break any new ground -- the story is "retired black-ops loner kills every single sex-slaver remotely responsible for kidnapping his daughter in Paris," and that's it. But the film has three things going for it:
Liam Neeson brings intelligence and a surprising broken-down sadness to his avenging-hero role.
The movie takes a cue from "Die Hard" and spends a good half-hour setting up relationships before unleashing hell.
And the action scenes are refreshingly spare, if choppy -- Neeson rarely takes more than two moves (one of them a throat-chop) to take down an opponent, and it becomes sort of awesomely repetitive after a while.
If you find the film's xenophobic undercurrents distasteful, take solace in this: "Taken" was co-written and directed by the Frenchmen responsible for "District B13" -- so at least the xenophobia is imported.
_____
B-minus; 94 minutes; rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language.
We talk about "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" -- or rather, we talk about how "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" wasn't screened for critics while Fatboy yells "LYCANS!!!" at random intervals.
I talk about "Inkheart" not making a damn lick of sense.
And then someone calls to ask about the Oscar nominations, and I get to decry the Academy Awards as the high-school popularity contest that it is.
"Inkheart" takes a great idea and then refuses to do much with that idea -- including, I'm afraid, explaining it clearly to the audience.
The premise -- adapted from the first book in Cornelia Funke's fantasy trilogy for kids -- is a corker: What if there were magically endowed people called "Silvertongues" who could literally bring books to life, "Jumanji"-style, simply by reading them out loud?
Like the best fantasy ideas, it's simple, but it opens up a universe of possibilities. You can imagine Silvertongues using their power for selfish ends. You can imagine the complicated philosophical questions a character from a novel might have for its author after being brought to life by a Silvertongue's words. Ms. Funke adds an interesting wrinkle (maybe one wrinkle too many) to her premise by also declaring that when a Silvertongue "reads someone out" of a book, someone in the real world gets "read into" the same story. For example, if Dorothy materializes in our world out of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," some unlucky flesh-and-blood schmuck suddenly finds himself in Kansas, fleeing a tornado. Does that mean the story itself is rewritten by the Silvertongue during the act of reading? (And if so, does the Silvertongue get royalties?)
The movie raises these questions and many more. Unfortunately -- in a move that kind of had me tearing out my hair toward the end -- the movie doesn't always bother to answer those questions. The resulting ambiguity isn't compelling -- it creates a lack of internal logic. And it makes a fairly charming, well-acted, easygoing little fantasy flick more than a little aggravating at times.
Anyway. The story: A Silvertongue named Mortimer (Brendan Fraser) and his gifted daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) have been on the run for over a decade. It seems that before Mortimer understood his power, he brought a medieval bad guy (Andy Serkis), a weak-willed flamethrower (Paul Bettany) and other punks of varying roguery into our world out of a fantasy novel called "Inkheart." In the process, Mortimer accidentally trapped his wife (Sienna Guillory) inside the book.
Our hero has been traveling the world ever since -- hiding from the book's evil characters and searching for another copy of the out-of-print "Inkheart" so he can read his sweetie back into our world.
It's a perfectly serviceable fantasy story hook -- even if it's nakedly playing for the elusive "Harry Potter" dollar -- and I can only get so mad at any movie that extols the magic of reading. (This flick has a moral similar to that of "The Neverending Story": Become literate and get revenge.) But you can already see the film starting to become a nitpicker's paradise, because apparently it never once occurred to Mortimer in over a decade to check eBay or call the book's author (Jim Broadbent), who seems willing to believe in Silvertongues based on the scantest of evidence.
And that’s just the first of many questions the filmmakers raise and absolutely fail to answer:
1. Why does Bettany still want to be read back into "Inkheart" -- even after learning the horrible things that happen to him in it?
2. Why do Silvertongues magically transport flesh-and-blood people into books only some of the time?
3. Serkis' villain employs a stuttering Silvertongue who reads money and monsters out of books for Serkis. Many of Serkis' henchmen find themselves trapped inside famous books as a result of the aforementioned real-world/novel switcheroo. Why would the remaining henchmen keep following a guy who does that to them?
4. Again: Are the books rewritten when characters appear in our world or aren't they?
5. Under what conditions, precisely, can a Silvertongue rewrite a story? Does the author have to do the rewriting? Can the Silvertongue just read any old set of words aloud and change reality?
6. How on earth could Mortimer go so far into adulthood without knowing he had this gift? Wouldn't someone have noticed the first time he tried to read an eye chart and was suddenly surrounded by a pile of block letters?
I could go on and on. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but it isn't: These questions are fundamental to major story developments, and leaving them unanswered makes for confused viewing. It's as if the producers threw up their hands at some point and said, "Who cares? It's just a fantasy for kids" -- ignoring the simple fact that making rules and sticking to them is as important in defining a fantasy universe as it is when you're defining traffic laws.
The actors are mostly charming; Bettany in particular is broody and cool, and I enjoyed watching him struggle with the notion of free will after he (literally) meets his maker. There are a few neat visual beats and some clever character bits. It's funny when Mortimer's aunt (Helen Mirren) calls Serkis a "barbaric piece of pulp fiction." But all that good stuff is so much flailing around, because it takes place in a formless, lawless, structureless void. _____
C; 106 minutes; rated PG for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language.
On Friday, Jan. 16, I ran through a list of some great-but-overlooked movies from 2008, now available through the magic of digital versatile disc. We also reflected on the many comebacks of Mickey Rourke.
"Last Chance Harvey" is basically "Before Sunrise" for middle-aged people -- only with less interesting conversations and a more formulaic construction. It's handsomely made and contains few surprises. But before completely burying this warm-hearted little project with faint praise, I also want to stress that "Last Chance Harvey" contains two very fine lead performances that make it quite pleasant to watch.
Those performances belong to Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, playing two lonely, awkward workaholics. Harvey (Hoffman) is a jingle writer whose career is collapsing while he's stuck in London for his semi-estranged daughter's wedding. (Hoffman plays the piano in this, and if you get bored, have fun pretending "Harvey" is a toned-down sequel to "Ishtar.") Kate (Thompson) is a wannabe writer working for Britain's Public Statistics Agency -- stuck with the thankless job of trying to survey people at Heathrow Airport as they trudge off their transatlantic flights.
Writer/director Joel Hopkins ("Jump Tomorrow") draws some blunt parallels before bringing these two together in an airport bar. There are back-to-back scenes in which Kate and Harvey feel lost among younger, hipper and/or better-adjusted people. And after they meet for a conversation-driven whirlwind courtship, the story runs afoul of formula: There's a wacky clothes-trying-on montage, a fateful agreement to meet in a public spot the next day, a manufactured late-film crisis and, good grief, even a race across town to make a last-chance romantic gesture.
I will say that Hopkins paints by numbers in a mature, responsible fashion; other than writing a needless subplot in which Kate's mother worries that her Polish neighbor is a serial killer, his execution of these clichés is calm and mature.
But Hoffman and Thompson elevate the material to a surprising degree, because they each just steadfastly refuse to phone it in. I loved how they both let themselves look frazzled and uncool and very much their own respective ages and heights, like a rom-com Mutt and Jeff. Hoffman (who's said he's very proud of this performance, and I can see why) radiates the nervous, ashamed desperation of an old-school guy being left behind; he was once the life of the party, and now he might as well have the word "NEEDY" tattooed on his forehead. When he tries to engage Kate -- who describes herself as being "comfortable with being disappointed" -- it's as if Harvey is scraping up what remains of his charm and holding it out to her in a thimble. A scene where he finally mans up and gives a father-of-the-bride toast is devastating, and Hoffman just kills whenever Harvey owns up to his mediocrity and tiny failures. He and Thompson give this somewhat underwhelming story a genuine human core. _____
B-minus; 92 minutes; rated PG-13 for brief strong language.
