Sunday, March 13, 2016

Taken (Finished)

Movie Poster

I started to watch this movie, ("Taken") Friday evening but had to stop because the first third reminded me too much of my divorce and estrangement from my son. I tried to resume watching it last night (Saturday) but the action and violence was too much. So again, after about a half hour, I turned it off and tried to calm down so I could get to sleep later.

I finally finished watching the whole movie this afternoon. I watched bits of it in between doing loads of laundry. Again, the violence and action was really hyped up. I can't imagine of sitting in a theater trying to watch the whole thing in a single sitting. Not very relaxing. The violence was brutal and almost cartoonish in that the hero always shot straight and deadly but the bad guys couldn't hit the side of a barn (luckily for the hero).

The DVD I borrowed from the library contained the both the theatrical version and the extended cut. I deliberately watched the theatrical version first. Turns out the theatrical version was what was shown in the USA while the extended cut was what was shown in Europe.

I debated about watching the extended cut. I was reluctant to force myself to watch such intensity again. So I decided to find out first more about the Extended Cut. Turns out the Theatrical Version is 90 minutes long and the Extended Cut adds a whooping extra 3 minutes (93 minutes total length). 

The extra 3 minutes made me wonder if there was an extra scene, or longer scenes, or a series of minute edits. Looking on line, I found an article which detailed all the differences. [SPOILER ALERT] Turns out my hunch about the series of minute edits was correct. So declined to invest another 93 minutes of watching extreme violence. Of course, the movie had a happy ending, and the daughter was saved just in time by good ol' Dad ("Daddy" for the girls).

After watching this first of the series of three "Taken" movies, I don't plan on watching the remaining two. After all the killing in the first film, it is difficult to imagine that anyone is left alive to fight in the remaining two movies. Of course, there are a lot of people in the world, so our hero obviously pissed off enough bad guys to warrant two more movies.

I think this movie can be interpreted as an allegory for the USA's fight against terrorism. The sad sack father represents the US military loyally trying to defend the innocent population (represented by the daughter) from the evil terrorists (representing any evil body). I think the movie programs the audience to support the concept of "whatever it takes" in order to save the innocent virginal daughter from being raped by the evil arabs. Torture is presented in a positive light (pun intended) because it is used to extract vital information needed to get to the kidnapped daughter. A countdown is also used to further justify torture and violence because the clocking is ticking and "whatever it takes...,."

After watching the movie, I noticed that just walking in public brought on feelings of paranoia. I wondered if any of the people walking by were "bad guys" (especially those who looked like the foreigners in the movie). I think this is another trick to desensitize the public to how our military treats/abuses foreigners.

I have no interest in watching more of this violent propaganda.

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