Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
: Taken :
by William the Bloody
Bryan Mills is a retired CIA agent. He got out of the game as soon as he could and uprooted his whole life in order to be near his estranged teenage daughter who lives with his exwife and her new husband. Despite his exwife's attempts to keep contact at a minimum, his daughter Kim is still the apple of his eye and she still loves him, too. However when Kim as the opportunity to travel to Paris with one of her friends, Bryan is reluctant to let her go. Kim needs the consent of both parents to travel overseas, but Bryan knows how dangerous even seemingly safe countries can be. When faced with his daughter's hatred, Bryan relents to her wishes, giving her a special international phone so that they can still talk every day. When Kim and her friend Amber arrive in Paris, they meet a cute guy who offers to share a cab to split the cost. They agree, and Amber who flirts with this man, lets on that they are travelling alone. That evening a group of thugs break into the apartment where the girls are staying. Kim sees the men grab her friend and only has moments to tell her father on the phone what's going on. He gives her careful instructions to hide so that he can tell her what to do: brace yourself. They are going to take you. Leave the phone on. Shout out anything descriptive about them you can find. To Kim's credit, she does just that, yelling out tattoos and hair colour as they take her away. One of the men finds the phone. Bryan hears his breathing and tells them he has no money for ransom, but he is skilled. Let his daughter go now and everyone can just walk away. Take her, and he will use every asset at his command to track them down and kill them all. The man on the other end of the phone says "good luck" and hangs up.
The Good: I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The trailers led me to believe it was a kidnap and ransom film. Not so. Kim and Amber are taken to be sold into sex and slave trade. The film doesn't pull many punches in that arena, either. We see many young girls who are drugged into a stupor and handcuffed to beds so that they can "service" man after man. It is NOT a pretty picture. They do a good job with the characterization of the main characters, too. We definitely see Bryan's solid love for his daughter and you do get the sense that he would literally do anything for her, up to lose his own life to save hers. There are some mighty clever ploys used in Bryan's hunt for Kim, which I applaud. It was rather refreshing that almost half of the movie goes by before anyone fires a gun, and I think there was only one explosion.
The Bad: While for the most part Liam Neeson was wonderful, at time his native accent did slip through. For shame. Even though there was only one explosion. I was still pretty disappointed that it was there at all. I feel like the film was pretty believable on most counts, and no explosions would have bolstered the realism in my opinion. The ending... well, that was the least believable of all. The entire time he's tracking down the kidnappers and his daughter was very real-seeming, but after all the mayhem that ensued, I don't understand why there weren't more consequences. (trying no to give anything away, here)
All in all, I enjoyed it. It was very intense and it did a good job conveying that intensity and Bryan's desperation. Lots of good old fashioned cleverness used here and not an overreliance on "connections" to do most of the problem solving. A solid action thriller backed by a father's unconditional love.
A-
