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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
"Taken 2" is the sequal to director Pierre Morel's 2008 movie Taken starring Liam Neeson. The movie opened last Friday.
Same story, different city on display in 'Taken 2'
LANDON MCDONALD
imcdonald@kansan.com
Note to Albanian sex traffickers: Stop taking stuff from Liam Neeson.
The original "Taken" was a tightly-paced, leanly plotted Euro thriller starring Nesenas as Bryan Mills, a tough-as-nails CIA operative who used his "very particular set of skills" to save his kidnapped daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), from the clutches of a prostitution ring.
Its follow-up, the imaginatively titled "Taken 2," is the action movie equivalent of "The Hangover Part II": an overblown, underwritten rehash that fully expects its audience to forget they've seen this all before, and with shrewder direction and sharper dialogue. Every sequel is formulaic to some extent, but this "same script, different city" phenomenon really needs to stop.
Olivier Megaton's film starts off promisibly, opening with a mass funeral for all the swarthy stereotypes Neeson's character bumped off in the first film. Presiding over their burial is Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija), who vows to track down Mills and his family in order to exact satisfaction for the murder of his son, one
of the original kidnappers. The idea of anonymous henchmen being avenged by their loved ones is a potentially awesome concept, but unlike its predecessor, which had zero qualms about Mills threatening the lives of innocent Parisians, "Taken 2" has no interest in ethical complexity.
After her traumatic experience abroad, Kim seems suspiciously eager to travel with her mother (Famke Janssen) tostanbul, where Mills has just completed a mission for the U.S. embassy. By the time Krasniqi men abduct her parents, she's lounging in a bikini by the side of a deserted hotel swimming pool. This girl either has nerves of steel or short-term memory loss. Anyway, it falls to the daughter to rescue her super-spy pops, meaning that a wretched portion of the movie is spent watching Kim run around Istanbul, chucking grenades at major landmarks and handling a taxi like a student-driver Steve McQueen.
Neselson, an actor who's made stoic intensity his bread and butter, gives a dutiful, vaguely disinterested performance as Mills. The bearded, velvet-voiced Serbedzija bears an unfortunate resemblance to the
Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials, a fact that makes it difficult to take him seriously as the big bad. "I don't always kidnap Liam Neeson's family, but when I do, I prefer to do it in Istanbul."
All these criticisms would be minor, however, if "Taken 2" had a firmer command of its action scenes. The fighting here is intercept with Megaton's woky camerawork and an infuriating lack of spatial awareness, so that every confrontation unfolds in a confused, rapid-cut blur. At one point, Neeson appears to literally face-palm a character to death. Or maybe that's what really happened. We are talking about the guy who trained Obi-Wan and Batman. For "Taken 3," may I suggest a killer noogie?
FINAL RATING
Ben Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, center, in "Argo," a rescue thriller about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Affleck also directed the film.
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Affleck does it again from director's chair
ALEX LAMB
alamb@kansan.com
Ben Affleck officially reclaims status as Hollywood golden boy with his new political thriller "Argo." He proves in his third directorial outing that he's got the chutzpah to take on both the historic Iran hostage crisis and the duplicity of the movie industry in the same film — a feat that awards voters undoubtedly test.
While Affleck is still thought of mainly as an actor, his real calling lies in the director's chair. With "The Town" he solidified himself as a force to be reckoned with behind the camera (simultaneously giving his best performance in front of the camera). In "Argo" he transports that same heist-flick suspense to a real-life tale of an international rescue mission.
This starts with the most intense opening of the year, where in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the American Embassy in Tehran is stormed by a rioting crowd of Islamist students and militants. Fifty-two Americans are taken hostage, though six others
escape capture and hole up in the Canadian ambassador's home.
Ten weeks later, CIA "exfiltration" specialist Tony Mendez (Affleck) develops a plan to get the six diplomats out: build a cover in Hollywood for a fake sci-fi flick, go into Tehran as the movie's producer and bring the group out under the guise of the film crew on a location scouting trip.
The first part of this scheme — creating a fake blockbuster — lampoons the Hollywood system and provides a surprising amount of laugh-out-loud humor to a serious story, mostly thanks to John Goodman and Alan Arkin's showrunner characters.
But once Mendez arrives in Tehran, Affleck lays on the tension of the situation. By the time the climactic escape is set in motion, viewers' hearts are racing furiously as the group runs through a mine-field of danger that threatens to destroy them at each step.
From the engrossing writing to the break-neck editing, "Argo" grabs the audience from start to finish. However, it's the excellent period and cultural detail, the
interwoven real footage and news reports and, of course, the urgent performances of the terrific ensemble cast that place viewers right there in the thick of it.
While Affleck drives the mission forward with an absorbing gravitas, Bryan Cranston (who's seemingly everywhere these days) also leaves a solid impression as his CIA handler. Scoot McNairy stands out among the diplomats, distrufful of Mendez's plan and further adding to the film's nervous energy.
With the recent embassy attack in Libya, "Argo" takes on another level of political timeliness and meaning. This story makes for a hell of a ride, and an example of the power of cinema, it satisfies both on a historical and a dramatic level.
FINAL RATING
Edited by Sarah McCabe
Adolescent invincibilities on tap in Chbosky's 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'
LANDON MCDONALD
lmcdonald@kansan.com
The film's eponymous wallflower is Charlie (Logan Lerman), a painfully introverted freshman who's
Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" is a film that sneaks up on you. At first the story, adapted from Chbosky's own 1999 novel, trudges along as a reasonably diverting young adult quirk-fest, the kind where a band of would-be Holden Caulfields rage against suburbia by smoking pot and going to foreign films, and the main character's dream girl is defined by her outre obsession with vinyl.
Then David Bowie's "Heroes" kicks in on the soundtrack, and "Perks" begins to soar. Here's a movie that recalls the high school experience with a disarming sincerity that sees past the pimpled layers of angst and affectation, revealing the budding mind and wilted heart of adolescence itself.
starting high school just after his best friend's suicide. The only connection he makes on his first day is with his English teacher Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd), who sees the boy's potential as a writer and challenges him with essays on the works of Fitzgerald and Salinger. After a few weeks of bookish isolation, Charlie meets the spunky upperclassman Sam (Emma Watson) and her ebullient gay stepbrother Patrick (Ezae Miller) and is quickly swept into their world of alternative music, late-night city drives and the singular sensation of performing "Rocky Horror" live in fishnets and heels.
Lerman, who first impressed me as Christian Bale's headstrong son in "3:10 to Yuma," ascends to leading-man status here, finding the right balance between Charlie's nice-guy placidity and the stormy, pangs of depression he feels after a pair of life-altering tragedies. Watson, fresh from her Hogwarts valedictory and sporting a nearly
Yet as excellent as Lerman and Watson are, Ezra Miller nearly steals the show out from under them as Patrick, whose puckish nature masks deep wounds over a boyfriend (Johny Simmons) who refuses to acknowledge him in public. After Miller's fearsome performance as Tilda Swinton's sociopathic spawn in last year's "We Need To Talk About Kevin," I was worried about him being typecast as purely malevolent characters. Turns out my fears were unfounded. His Patrick is an inspired creation, veering madly from kook wisdom to mournful abandon.
flawless American accent, makes for a credible indie pixie and the sympathetic recipient of Charlie's puppy love. And as a "Rocky Horror" fan I'd be lying if I said she doesn't make for a terrific Jane*
"The Perks of Being A Wallflower" represents an honest, heartfelt attempt to recapture the turbulent rhythms of youth. It will find an audience with anyone who remembers a time when the future was unwritten, casual romance passed for high drama and a good song on the radio was all it took to make you feel infinite
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