The only thing that’s been Taken here is a bunch more money. Liam Neeson, who was initially having second thoughts about starring in Taken 3 is currently negotiating a $20 million contract to star in the third installment of the action franchise that essentially reinvented his career. The price tag marks a $5 million raise from his salary for the last film. The writers of the first two films, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, are working on the new script, with Olivier Megaton possibly returning to direct. Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace have yet to sign on. Production is expected to begin in February 14.
Taken 2 grabs everything that was surprisingly enjoyable about the original film and batters it into the ground like… Liam Neeson beating up an Albanian human trafficking ring. The brute charm that the 2008 Taken found in portraying the Irish Oscar-nominee as an ultra-competent badass has withered to kitsch, and what’s left is tinged with even more xenophobia and weird paternal wish-fulfillment. Worse, the directing reins have been handed from greater Luc Besson protégé Pierre Morel to the lesser (but, granted, more awesomely named) Olivier Megaton, of Transporter 3 and Columbiana , and he slashes the action sequences to such incoherent bits that half the fights could have been shot on a sound stage thousands of miles from any star and chopped in after the fact. Why are we watching this again? Ah, yes, novelty. It is still a kick, though with rapidly diminishing returns, to see Neeson as the tersely tough CIA operative turned security contractor Bryan Mills. Bryan’s relentless when it comes to destroying bad guys but pure pudding when it comes his apparently still teenage daughter Kim ( Maggie Grace , who at 29 isn’t entirely believable as a kid still working on getting her drivers license) and ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). Bryan isn’t fazed by the prospect of facing down a gang of Balkan toughs, but learning that his little girl has a boyfriend and didn’t tell him about it leaves him stricken. Lenore and the man she remarried are separated, and Bryan gallantly offers to fly her and their daughter to Istanbul, where he’ll meet them after completing a short job, unknowingly making them all targets for the relatives of the men he killed in the last movie, led by Murad Krasniqi (Croatian Serb actor Rade Serbedzija, the go-to choice for playing sinister Eastern Europeans). Whatever the structure of this criminal ring, it’s a family business and they have great contacts, seeing as members of the local police force and staffers at the luxury hotel at which Bryan and his family are staying are in the mafiosos’ pockets. When the Albanians come to take our not-so-helpless Americans — twist! — it’s Bryan and Lenore who end up getting captured, with the former growling his “Listen to me carefully” instructions to Kim as she attempts to come to her parents’ rescue. Taken 2 is dumb and as discardable as a box of cheap tourist trinkets, and its fights go so disappointingly easy the film’s end arrives almost arbitrarily. Like its predecessor, it’s also colored with some ugly American panic — ironic, given the international cast and crew involved in making it. The world abroad is filled with foreigners who can’t wait to grab your virginal blonde daughters or take unwarranted revenge for what was an elaborately violent but, you know, totally justifiable act of familial defense. Even before Bryan cottons to the fact that people are out to get them, he sternly forbids his daughter from wandering out of the hotel while he and Lenore take a private car to the market for lunch. Later, Bryan has Kim set off grenades in the middle of the city in order to use the sound to figure out how far she is from where he’s being held. If you’re visiting a foreign city, it’s best to have as little contact with it as possible — but committing acts of sizable destruction is apparently fine in service of your fellow travelers. Taken 2, which packs in an improbable car chase through the narrow streets of an old neighborhood and a oddly anticlimactic fist fight sequence in a Turkish bath, is ultimately a simplistic bad dad fantasy about a guy getting to righteously defend his family against the masses who are eager to do them harm. Bryan may have let his old job take him away from his wife and daughter, but now he gets to make up for being an absentee father by defending them against all comers, guns a-blazing. Unruffled and an expert on everything, he guides the grateful, whimpering women in his life to safety and in exchange gets to lecture the tribal head of the gangsters about how he needs to just accept the fact that the son is dead and deserved his fate. The film doesn’t make too much of the detail that Murad and his men are Muslim, but does suggest, in moments like the one just described, that there’s no reasoning with them. Taken 2 has the unfortunate bad timing of choosing for its action movie explosion playground a country currently experiencing some serious real-world tensions with neighboring Syria. But its sense of Americans-in-a-foreign-land entitlement is nonspecific enough that this isn’t particularly uncomfortable — it’s so broad, in fact, that it approaches but never quite embraces self-parody. If this is what producer/writer Luc Besson thinks audiences are looking for these days, he has a low opinion of people indeed. God help us if he turns out to be right. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Say what you will about Armond White , at least the iconoclast film critic is a conversation-starter. Over at CityArts White has posted his annual “Better-Than” list , in which he pairs seemingly disparate films of the year to show you why the movies you love/think are great are, in fact, vastly overrated. Example: ” Jack and Jill > The Descendants ,” White insists, in a clear trouncing of “humility” over “sanctity.” “Adam Sandler’s affectionate, very broad ethnic satire defies Alexander Payne’s smug denial of America’s ethnic history,” he writes. Don’t stop there, Armond! As the 2011-2012 transition births yet more critic Top Ten lists (hey, check out Movieline’s here and here and here and here !), it’s lists like these that give us fresh perspective on the underrated, or even perfectly adequately-rated films of the year. And at least where White dumps on certain lauded Oscar contenders he also proposes films with themes he sees as tighter, better, more valuable by comparison. The Adventures of Tintin > The Artist Spielberg restores the essence of cinema (from the Greek “kinesis,” meaning movement), defying Hazanavicius’ too-cute silent movie hoax. Joy vs. Inanity. I suppose even The Artist ‘s supporters can acknowledge that it can seem, perhaps, “too-cute” — and boy, Tintin was nothing but movement. Sure? Rise of the Planet of the Apes > The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Rupert Wyatt reboots the original series as a fresh, wild vision of modern frustration, defying Fincher’s apathetic wallow in pathology and brutality. Emotion vs. Style. White raises a good question: What happened to all those critics who Oscar-raved about Apes when it came out last summer? Paul > Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Greg Mottola, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost grasp the depth of American pop culture while Apichatpong Weerasethakul peddles Asian obscurantism. Joyous vs. Spurious. “Asian obscurantism” Uncle Boonmee may be, but… Armond, you crazy for this one. Colombiana > The Help Olivier Megaton and Zoe Saldana find new racial, sexual and genre archetypes to discover the meaning of love, defying the stereotyping of black women’s civil rights struggle. Progress vs. Relapse. Are some of these pairings seemingly arbitrary? Sure. Is Colombiana more progressive than The Help ? By golly, yes . Jack and Jill > The Descendants Adam Sandler’s affectionate, very broad ethnic satire defies Alexander Payne’s smug denial of America’s ethnic history. Humility vs. Sanctimony I spoke too soon. This shit cray. Still, thank you Armond for even juxtaposing two movies like Paul and Uncle Boonmee in my brain. True contrarian or no, what a feast for thought. Some of these arguments are just insane enough that they make sense. Read White’s full 2011 Better-Than List here and tell us what you think — and which better-thans you’re in agreement with — in the comments below. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘It looks more like a big city and less like a stage,’ Florian Wieder explains. By Gil Kaufman Chris Brown performs at the 2011 VMAs Photo: Jeff Kravitz/Film Magic When you settled in on the couch at home on Sunday night to watch the 2011 Video Music Awards , it probably felt like you were going back to the future. As in years past, the main stage for the show was a visual spectacle. This year the theme was time travel, and the stage’s designer was intent on making you feel as if you were on a mind-tripping journey. “We met up half a year ago and [VMA Executive Producer Jesse Ignjatovic] came up with the idea to create a time tunnel,” explained VMA main stage production designer Florian Wieder of the psychedelic set that looked like a cross between an alien landing ship, the floor of a 1970s disco and the baddest midnight laser-light show ever. “That’s one of the reasons why the whole design is based on a tunnel that is right in the center of the stage.” Like the pre-show , which shared some of the same curvy, intergalactic whimsy, the main broadcast mixed undulating wave forms with bright, pop-art-style colors and a black and white theme to set the stage for a galaxy of performers, including Adele, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Kanye West, Beyonc
Emma Stone and company fend off ‘Colombiana’ and ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.’ By Ryan J. Downey Emma Stone in “The Help” Photo: DreamWorks “The Help” managed to fend off competition from a new action movie, a horror flick and a comedy as the overall box-office suffered from stormy weather on the East Coast. The adaptation of the popular novel took in another $14.3 million over the weekend to remain at number one with a $96.6 million total. The Box Office Top Five: 1. “The Help,” $14.3 million 2. “Colombiana” $10.3 million 3. “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” $8.6 million 4. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” $8.6 million 5. “Our Idiot Brother” $6.5 million Hurricane Irene certainly affected box-office receipts, according to studio estimates released Sunday. Ticket sales were down roughly 23 percent compared with the same period last year. AMC theaters closed all of its theaters in New York, Virginia, Philadelphia, Marlyand and D.C. while Clearview Cinemas and Regal Cinemas closed many locations as well, The Los Angeles Times reported. “The Help” has been in theaters for three weeks now and will certainly cross the $100 million mark domestically soon. Zoe Saldana, whose supporting turns in “Avatar” and “Star Trek” have made her a fan favorite, stars in “Colombiana,” the latest female driven action flick from Luc Besson. The filmmaker behind “Leon: The Professional” and “La Femme Nikita” served as co-writer and producer on the movie (it was directed Olivier Megaton), which has suffered from unfavorable reviews. The revenge-driven tale which stars Saldana as a drug dealer’s daughter turned assassin was #2 at the box office with a $10.3 million debut. “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is another movie with a famous director as co-writer and producer. Guillermo del Toro told Comic-Con audiences that the original “Afraid…,” which was a television movie he saw as a kid, was one of the scariest things he’d ever seen. Katie Holmes stars in the creepy-house centered remake, which took in just $8.6 million in its debut to land at #3. “Our Idiot Brother” was the only of the weekend’s bigger new releases to receive mostly favorable reviews from critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes , but it opened with the worst box-office receipts. The Paul Rudd comedy earned just $6.5 million. This weekend’s new release schedule includes espionage thriller “The Debt.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Our Idiot Brother.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Photos ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Premiere ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’
