wJun 28, 2009


Taken with "Taken"

This is purely my own made-up shit, but it seems to me like there are a lot of feminists out there who dislike watching shows/movies/anime that are violent. I'd like to take the time to tell the Internet that this is not the case with me, in spite of how often I will go on and on about sparkly shoujo manga like Cardcaptor Sakura.

Last night some friends and I watched the movie "Taken."

The first fifteen minutes of the movie are pretty terrible, but the premise of the movie is that Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA agent. He lost his marriage due to being gone all the time, but now he's trying to be close to his daughter, who's living with her ridiculously rich, pony-buying step-father.

His daughter goes to France with her 19-year-old friend and they get abducted by Albanians who want to sell them as sex slaves.

Being a retired CIA agent, Liam Neeson has some badassery up his sleeves.

If you have any doubts about Liam Neeson's abilities to play a badass motherfucker, I suggest you see this movie. I suggest you see it anyway. Watch him shoot people in the face, watch him kill people with their own weapons, watch him handle vehicles like you didn't even know they could be handled. HOLY SHIT.


My only warning is this: Cerebrally, it's mildly disturbing to me how quickly the analytical-feminist side of my brain shut down while watching this movie. It was clear that women were props in this movie, used and abused and lying unrescued (because Neeson literally only cares about his daughter, and will literally kill any random fucker who is in his way or preventing his progress) and basically serving as plot devices so that the boys can run around and shoot at each other.

But because the action scenes were SO AWESOME AND BAD-ASS that they literally made me cackle with glee, I could overlook the mild-to-moderate fail.

Still, it makes a bit of sense that "the bad guys" weren't women, as it's more unlikely for women to sell each other as sex slaves, I think.

Also, not all of the bad guys are Albanian, if anyone was wondering if this was a hate-on-POC movie.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 1:52 PM
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