The Great BOURNE VS. TAKEN Debate

Okay, hi! I wrote this about a month ago and then life moved on and I kind of forgot about it until all the forces of the universe converged to time the release of the following around the same time: The Grey starring Liam Neeson, AKA Liam Neeson: Wolf Puncher, and the trailer for the forthcoming Bond Bourne Legacy. The following is therefore bathed in irony because Bourne sans Jason Bourne, Matt Damon or Paul Greengrass is the defiling of a perfect trilogy and I really want to see The Grey because apparently it has lovely 70's nihilism man versus nature overtones YUM. This, to some degree, should counteract my bias. Hopefully.

Now, without much further ado, I bring you, THE GREAT BOURNE VS. TAKEN DEBATE: FINALLY SETTLED. Other opinions are available but they are wrong.

THE CONTEXT

Early January 2012

EVERYONE: Rosie, you must watch Taken. It is awesome and amazing and other non-specific adjectives beginning with a. Also, it is like Bourne (but better).

ROSIE: *internally* WHUT?! BETTER THAN BOURNE?! BLASPHEMY! A PLAGUE A’BOTH YOUR HOUSES! *out loud* Well those are some pretty big shoes to fill, Grandma, but I shall take your ambitious claim and test it since I have wanted to see Taken for quite some time and I trust your fair judgement.

[ROSIE WATCHES TAKEN]

ROSIE: ...Huh. I feel peculiarly underwhelmed. I shall investigate the reasons, take a poll, and record my findings. Natch.

By now I’ve done the research; I’ve studied both Taken and the Bourne trilogy, taken notes, read good and bad reviews, interviewed people, thought about it way too much, and two weeks later I feel ready to present a coherent argument intended to settle the Great Bourne vs. Taken debate. (Actually, I’m not sure it’s that great outside of my circle.) However, before I begin, I’d just like to offer this disclaimer: if it isn’t already obvious it will become so soon; I am firmly in the Bourne camp, four-season sleeping bag and all. Despite this, I have tried to the best of my ability to eliminate any bias from this argument. Enjoy.

RESULTS OF THE POLL

The results of the poll reflected that Taken was the favourite amongst my contemporaries (about 20 of them), which was a saddening revelation on the face of humanity, but one which spurred me on to reveal the misconceptions around this film’s alleged greatness.

When asking which they preferred, I included the addendum Why? Because choice without reason is stupid, and if you choose without reason then you are also stupid. The majority who preferred Taken did so because Liam Neeson ‘is a legend’ while some couldn’t even think of a reason. The only three proper explanations I received were: ‘Taken has more emotion and it makes for a better ending...I’m not gay, honest.’; ‘Neeson is out of this world in Taken, whereas Bourne is more like an action video game in its ridiculousness, over the top technology etc.’ and ‘Taken is more in your face, it’s all brawls, taking up clues, and it leaves you wanting more. The fights are more realistic; Bourne seems fake in comparison to the edge-of-your-arse stuff in Taken.’ I respectfully disagree with all three, though I love the phrase ‘edge-of-your-arse’. But let’s get back to that Liam Neeson is a legend thing, because although it says nothing about the actual film, it illuminates a lot of what Taken lacks.

THE NEESON EFFECT

When you think of Taken you think Liam Neeson first, and sex trafficking second (if at all, it’s so cursorily glanced at). When Neeson came to the project he was an actor with a lot of weight to his name, a name so big and fulgent that it blinds the audience to the fundamental nastiness of the film. People like Taken because Liam Neeson is in it—but would they like it so much if someone less-known, if some Joe Bloggs with no automatic bankability, no international rapport, had taken the role? Probably not. So when people watch Taken they are actually watching Liam Neeson being Liam Neeson and not a character in a story. If Taken were a junk food (and it is the cinematic equivalent of such) then Neeson would be the attractive packaging that distracts you from the lengthy list of chemical ingredients you’ve never heard of but which you happily ingest regardless of the not-good effect on your body. Neeson in Taken is like a buffer for all the insidious nasty crap you absorb without even knowing.

Compare this with the Bourne franchise. When Matt Damon entered the picture, he was a comparatively little-known actor without automatic bankability, so the success of Identity depended greatly on his central performance. He was a blank slate, much like his character. Most people who went to see Identity would have done so on the basis that it looked good, and in most cases I would wager it met if not exceeded their expectations—something a fair few viewers of Taken could not claim. And look how well Bourne did!

My point here is to differentiate between actor and film, a line easily blurred when a big halogen name is involved. Two weeks ago when I started thinking about this I was being too mild in my criticism of Taken. Partly it was because I thought I was overanalysing the film/seeing things which weren’t there (of course I’m overanalysing it, now shoosh, sit down), but it was mainly because I couldn’t bear to criticize anything involving Liam Neeson and his eyebrows sloped by pathos. Directing criticism at anything involving him felt to me like kicking the old dog that brings your slippers every morning. But then I realised I was falling into the trap; girls like him because he’s masculine yet sensitive; and guys like him because he’s sensitive yet masculine. Guys want to be him and girls want to be with him. Kind of. For me he’s more like a dad who also happens to be extremely attractive, but let us not open up that can of Freudian worms. I realised that defending a film because of a personal affection for the lead actor is just as bad as liking a film for the same reason. So I’m just going to say this now: I find both Liam Neeson and Matt Damon lovely, but that will have no bearing on my evaluation of their respective films. Promise. From here on in they are characters confined to stories and I will treat them as such.

SIMILARITIES

On the surface these films are similar, and I can understand why so many people have compared them. As I mentioned before, I was recommended Taken on the basis that it was like Bourne, and yet I was monumentally disappointed by it. Why did Taken fail to grab me the way Bourne did? Are they really similar at all? If this thesis is a Venn diagram, let’s fill in that middle segment. Okay, so both movies: centre around characters with CIA training, are chase films, have an international theme, focus on action/violence/fight scenes, have car chases through Paris, similar soundtracks (do I even need to mention that John Powell's score is immeasurably better and more immersive?), similar stunts such as scaling walls, and involve the protagonists speaking to the antagonists from various vantage points. Know why so many people compare Taken with Bourne? It’s because Taken is unmistakably post-Bourne. 

See, A Film Buff I interviewed about this informed me that Bourne came along at a time when the action genre was pretty stale and there were no real (non super) heroes like John Mclane and Indiana Jones doing the rounds anymore. (If you go watch the newer Bond movies you’ll see the influence Bourne has had.) Bourne kind of set a new precedent for what was to be expected. It’s no surprise then that after that reinvention cinemas are inundated with movies which echo the tough, gritty, completely unglamorous moral ambiguity of Bourne, mirrored in the bare-knuckle, hyper-kinetic fight sequences, far removed from the suavity of Bond. And inevitably each new offering will be compared to the seminal piece to which it owes its success. (Normally I like to judge things on their own account and not compare them to other things, but in this case it’s impossible not to, and a comparison is how I came to see Taken in the first place, so.) In the DVD extras, the director of Taken himself said that the Paris car chase scene was a deliberate nocturnal version of the iconic sequence in Identity—with the ‘improvement’ (it didn’t need to be improved; setting it at night made it simultaneously obvious and difficult to follow) that nothing being broken showed Bryan’s control (but which actually makes it completely dull, unrealistic and unsympathetic, but we’ll get back to that later). Evidently Bourne was very much in the minds of the film’s creators throughout production. But once you get past those superficial commonalities and riffs, are the films really all that similar? The answer is a resounding NO. Here’s why:

         

NARRATIVE

Paul Greengrass, director of Supremacy and Ultimatum, claims that all films are in essence chase films, and I agree with that. Both Taken and Identity are prime examples of chase films. The difference is subtle but significant: in Bourne the protagonist is being chased whereas in Taken the protagonist is doing the chasing which immediately introduces an atypical dynamic. It’s a precarious but potentially interesting narrative structure because we are accustomed to sympathise with the chasee. Maybe in a different movie it could work, but it doesn’t in Taken, principally because of misjudged characterisation—more on that later!

Now, if every film is essentially a chase, it must also be a quest. The central quest in Bourne is for identity. The central quest in Taken is to rescue Kim. Sounds good so far. Except, while Jason Bourne is always going forwards in finding his identity, there are people trying to hide it; the same people who are chasing him. This creates a sense of being surrounded. With Taken, the quest and the chase are the same thing. Lack of obstacle = lack of suspense. When I picture Bourne, I feel that big black roiling cloud at my back, I see it from the corner of my eye, I see it up ahead, and I’m always aware it is following me. But when I picture Taken, I see a leaf-blower blowing away a lot of leaves until it clears the ground.

The Bourne trilogy centres around the character of Jason Bourne, found floating in the sea with two bullet wounds in his back and suffering from amnesia. The only clue to his identity is a chip embedded in his thigh with the security code for a Zurich bank account. And so off we go to Zurich to discover who this guy is and why he has incapacitating fighting skills. Meanwhile the Super Secret Sect of the CIA want him dead for failing an important mission. And hello chaos.

Taken has a simple but promising premise; guy’s daughter goes to Europe, guy’s daughter gets abducted and sold into prostitution, guy goes to Europe to save daughter. And there’s a wonderful plot contrivance that the dad just happens to be an ex-CIA agent. Yep. He’s going to look for the baddies, find the baddies, and kill the baddies (I'm not the only one who, like, audibly cringed during that speech, right?). And even with the baddy’s taunting ‘Good luck’, we know he’s going to save his daughter, because this is not the kind of movie that is going to delve into the realism of sex trafficking, so we know the dad isn’t going to die because he’s Liam Neeson and he can kick your ass who else is going to save his daughter? And hello tension decrease.

Bourne has its origins in the series of books written by Robert Ludlum back in the seventies, so right from the get-go it’s going to have depth that a screenplay couldn’t because there’s an entire compendium behind it. The story (in both mediums) begins with Bourne in the water, which is a symbol of birth/renewal/cleansing etc. The very name ‘Bourne’ conjures up this idea of being born again. His real name turns out to be David Webb, because he’s entangled in all sorts of web-like intrigues. The films follow a cyclical nature: Identity begins in the water; Supremacy sees Bourne plunged into water, an incident that becomes the catalyst upon which the rest of the trilogy pivots; in Ultimatum he returns to the water, and to where the whole journey started off. Except now he knows who he was when he first emerged from the water, and who he is going to be from now on. He has come full circle. That is a character arc if ever there was one.

Also, if these movies were mathematical equations, Bourne would be in the realm of really complicated integrals, whereas Taken would be: father + ex-CIA agent = killing spree in Urpe.

Final point: as much as narrative is about telling a story, it is also about asking questions. Bourne asks many questions; Taken asks none (except maybe who's driving the boat?) and so there is essentially no work for the audience to do.

PROTAGONISTS

These are the guys we need to sympathise with in order for the story to be successful. However, they do not have to be squeaky clean paradigms of morality. That’s boring and unrealistic and we’ll probably end up wanting to punch the douchebag right in his holier-than-thou face because he’s passing oblique judgement on the immoral squalor of our lives. An interesting, compelling protagonist has flaws and sometimes infuriates us because they are being horrible and/or stupid, but we are infuriated because we care, and that’s key. We must care.

Jason Bourne is a blank canvas in search of a fresco. We immediately sympathise with him because he is vulnerable, and because everyone at some point in their life goes through that ‘finding themselves’ thing, without the Eat, Pray, Love, Vomit connotations. It taps into that childhood fear of being completely and utterly alone in the world. We find him interesting because he knows as little about himself as we do, so it’s a collaborative journey of self-discovery. We find him compelling because on the one hand we learn that he has killed on command in the past without remorse, and on the other his amnesia gives him the opportunity to rediscover his moral core. He continually struggles with conflicting emotions; his survival instinct is in constant battle with his moral conscience. I think the scene which best illustrates this is the sequence in Tangier where Jason has to kill a man he has no personal grudge against in order to save Nikki, and retroactively Marie. He has to become that killer once more in order to survive and to save others, but you can tell from his facial expressions and the revelation that he can ‘see all of their faces’ that this is never an easy decision, it is never justified, it is never morally black and white. I think that’s one of the key things which makes the Bourne franchise so affecting; it is never an easy watch.

On the other side of the coin, we have Bryan Mills—not a great name. In fact, it’s really forgettable. Without even watching either of the films you can tell that Bourne is going to be character-driven and Taken is going to be plot-driven, which is not in itself a bad thing AT ALL, but in this case it's a distinction that goes some way to forecast the depth to come. Like I mentioned above, Jason Bourne’s name carries a lot of symbolic weight. A lot of the time writers use names as embedded character hints, so bearing that in mind—what does ‘Bryan Mills’ tell us about Bryan Mills? I thought about this for a while. The only thing I could come up with is that Mills —> windmill —> windmill arms (both limbs and guns) —> if you get caught up in these, you’re fucked. Admittedly that’s a bit farfetched, but if his name tells us anything it tells us he is a relentless killing machine, which is exactly what he turns out to be. The only two facets of Bryan’s character we know are 1) he is a father and 2) he is an ex-CIA agent. He is literally 2-dimensional. There isn’t even a third thing I can say about his character! This is established within, what, like, the first 30 seconds of the movie? And it doesn’t change from then on. He never gets a third dimension. He almost gets a third dimension right at the end when he stumbles off the plane back into good ole safe America and this shadow crosses his face like ‘Oh shit, I just killed somewhere in the region of a hundred guys for my daughter who runs like a fucking three-legged turkey’ and he approaches something resembling remorse, like he might regret doing it, which is problematic and completely undermines the whole story, but at least it’s another facet, right? Wrong—because Kim quickly hugs him, tells him she loves him, and all is forgotten, like he hasn’t just committed serious serial murder and destroyed God knows how many lives. So not only does he never get a third dimension, he’s also a bit of a morally bankrupt asshole and possibly has a split personality.

ANTAGONISTS

In the same way that protagonists don’t have to be wholly good, antagonists don’t have to be wholly bad. They don’t have to be Evil to the Core Villains with a capital V. Ideally they should be just as complex and fully-developed as the protagonist in order for things to be equal. A hero is only as good as the forces opposed to him. It is only by overcoming the adversaries that the hero earns the right to be called a hero. You have to achieve that, and it’s not going to mean anything if your antagonists are absurdly unbelievable, one dimensional ciphers who can be vanquished as easily as snapping your fingers or firing your gun.

So, in Bourne the antagonists are a certain clandestine sect of the CIA who want him dead because not only has Jason Bourne failed a mission (a major faux-pas; agents are employed to be invisible), he’s also apparently gone rogue and therefore risks revealing the seedy nature of his employers (although in actuality he is suffering from amnesia). The CIA in these movies is represented by a bunch of characters who clash and scheme in constant power struggles, and this makes the CIA a character in and of itself, with some major flaws. This scenario is scary for several reasons; the CIA is repeatedly shown to be corrupt, training its agents in specialist regimes which condone rendition among other seedy things, justifying this by claiming ‘necessary measures for saving American lives’ (what about foreign lives?), and patronizing and deceiving the government by withholding the reality of what they are actually doing in order to receive funding—all of which basically suggests the CIA runs the country and the government doesn’t have a diddly-squat about the extent they’re going to. Scary, right? There’s also the fear that it’s Jason’s own country, own employers, essentially his own life which is out to get him, and there’s no escape except to keep running. This antagonist means serious business. As determined as Jason is to live, they are to see him dead. They are set up as being equal, and therein you have the character arc. There is mental chess as well as physical chess; the direction and characterization means that the more physically inert scenes such as those taking place in the various CIA hubs are just as tense as the action scenes. There is friction, deception, moral compromising, and a haunting lack of humanity or emotional attachment. The CIA is a whole built of many parts, inexhaustible and omniscient. This is a foe that demands respect, because it is formidable. And then you have Pam Landy who is the epitome of Awesome. Sorry to pull out my feminist flag, but it’s so refreshing to have a female antagonist who earns respect purely on the basis of her intelligence and cunning and not because of her looks. (In fact, all of the female characters in these films are wonderful.) No one is subjected to sexism or ageism. The victims as well as the villains are completely indiscriminate. The assassins (or assets) in Bourne are not only antagonists, but Bourne’s doppelgangers who haunt him throughout the series like ghosts of himself. They represent the past Bourne is attempting to rectify. And after he offs ‘The Teacher’ in Identity, there is this quasi-Frankenstein sense that the monsters he unwittingly created by becoming part of Treadstone are chasing him not only to kill him, but for answers about themselves. Also, they have theee most awesome theme Ever. Put simply: this antagonist has levels and shades.

With Taken, the antagonist consists of a series of undeveloped, gun-wielding ciphers and creeps, almost all reduced to snivelling little boys before being either shot, run over, or electrocuted to death. In the end it’s just some big fat guy who vividly resembles Jabba the Hutt (and come to think of it, Kim is kind of dressed like a bridal Princess Leia...). This guy is shot in the head before he even has a chance to speak. WHAT?! How is that threatening?! The only one I had any respect for was the guy on the boat who was ignominiously stabbed with his own blade because he was so discombobulated after stumbling out of the Bourne set into this. Think of a circular maze, and Kim is in the centre. Each circular wall of hedge represents an antagonist. Now, instead of doing the interesting thing and finding a clever way through the maze, Big Bry simply shoots his path straight through. I wish I was exaggerating. The baddies were like cloak & dagger villains in a pop-up book. Also, HOW DOES BRYAN NEVER GET CAUGHT?! He leaves an unsubtle trail of like, what, at least twenty dead guys and gets back home scot-free? And, like, never even worries about fingerprints? Bourne was so thorough he considered wiping the hotel room for FOOTPRINTS ffs.

There was one point at which a man in a trench coat stepped out of an apartment building and I went “OMG, IS THAT KEVIN SPACEY? HAS HE COME TO SAVE THIS FILM? ARE THEY DOING THE SAME THING THEY DID IN SE7EN WHERE HIS NAME DOESN’T APPEAR IN THE OPENING CREDITS SO YOU DON’T GUESS THE TWIST?!” And just when I started to hope that I’d horribly misjudged the scope of this film and it was indeed something deserving of Kevin Spacey, I realised that no, it wasn’t Kevin Spacey, it was some other guy. Some other guy who has given up kicking ass for sitting behind a desk. This guy was as close as Taken got to having an interesting villain. But actually he just turned out to be yet another douchebag. And then his wife gets shot in the arm.

Anyway, this brings me onto...

VIOLENCE

“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster.”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist me some Nietzsche. But it’s a completely relevant quote which underpins the philosophy of most stories involving retribution.

Violence in Bourne: not in the least gratuitous, balletic, exhilarating and almost beautiful to watch through the palpitations, stunningly choreographed and shot with a documentary sensibility, innovative in that random household objects are readily turned into effective weapons (a ball point pen, a toaster bomb, a book, an ornamental ashtray, a towel...). There’s also not much dwelling on injury which I’m all for because that automatically increases the certificate, it’s dehumanizing/demoralizing, and borderline sadistic. You really don’t see much, it’s all in the movements, but it is conveyed with such power and precision that it is felt viscerally. You are RIGHT THERE, barely dodging punches. Additionally, Bourne rarely kills, and does so only when there is no other option. It’s a judgement call; mostly he incapacitates to give himself enough time to get the heck outta there. On the few occasions he does kill, the camera focuses on facial expressions rather than the horrendous crime being committed. You witness Jason’s regret even as he cuts off the other guy’s air supply. I think that’s what makes it tough to watch; the remorse involved in the killings, the humanity showing through, the moral entanglement of it all.

Violence in Taken: repetitive, not emotionally engaging and therefore lacking in physical impact because you know what? I neither know nor care who is being blown up or beaten to a bloody pulp right now, and it doesn’t demand either awe or respect because it’s mostly a bunch of gunfuckery. Except, of course, for the Eli Roth-esque torture scene which was really GROSS, unnecessary, dehumanizing, HORRIBLE, and kinda made me hate Bryan and sympathise with the baddies. It also got the film bumped from a 12 to a 15, therefore ruling out probably half its core audience. STUPID. From that point on I felt cold, and I could never reconcile the fact that I was supposed to be rooting for Bryan when he’d just left some guy to slowly be electrocuted THROUGH THE THIGHS to death. I just—no, it belonged in a Hostel movie. And then Bryan basically goes on a killing spree, because Hey, it’s Urpe, he’s an ex-CIA agent and some Urpean thugs have kidnapped his daughter so it’s justified, yes? Non. Look, I’m not saying these guys didn’t deserve some kind of punishment, but I was thinking more along the lines of a lengthy incarceration, not soupefied insides. Surely wasting away behind bars with only your corrupt conscience and bitterness over what a crap-hole your life has become is waaaaay worse than being turned into a human sprinkler system. (Can you tell I’m totally against capital punishment?) Like I said, Bourne kills exclusively when it is the only way for him to survive, but Bryan kills simply because he can. I’m sorry—what gave him the right to take away someone else’s life? Also, since you know the daughter is going to be saved cause it’s that kinda movie, and therefore Big Bry must survive in order to save her, there is a lack of tension in the fight scenes. Even the one where he is about to be executed—for the first few seconds I was like OH SHIT HOW IS HE GOING TO GET OUTTA THIS ONE?! Notice I said how. I knew he was getting out, it was just a matter of the machinations.

ISSUES RAISED

Every story needs to say something, agreed? So what do these films say?

Probably one individual’s interpretation of something is at least slightly different from someone else’s. Depending on their personal experiences they will perceive different things within one work. For me the issues raised in Bourne are as follows: are you defined by your past? are you a product of your choices and actions? What is meant by ‘identity’? The frightening power and ubiquity of central intelligence. Inner conflicts. Being dispossessed by one’s own nation. You against you. Hope, survival, triumphing over adversity, justice. The corruption of authority and the importance of being first and foremost self-reliant.

The issues I thought Taken raised were: racism and the notion that everything ‘other’ or foreign is inherently evil, and revenge. The sex trafficking aspect could have been explored so much more—a couple of scenes from Kim’s point of view would have been really interesting. Sex trafficking and prostitution is a serious and very real issue, but I felt that it was reduced to a mere glossed-over platform upon which to place Bryan and his never-ending supply of artillery. At the beginning he warns his daughter that if she sets foot outside America something unspeakably terrible will happen, and then it does. Maybe the filmmakers aimed to off-set the obvious racism by importing their baddies from a different and 'undeveloped' country (undeveloped in this case evidently means all the menfolk are monsters because their motherland offers few opportunities besides and the natives are either too stupid to differentiate between moral and immoral, or are born inclined to the latter). But it doesn’t quite work because aside from everything else I’ve already said, they revert to the stereotypical Frenchie with a baguette cheerfully tucked under one arm *facepalm*. And then at some point the Albanian baddies become Middle Eastern. So the French, Albanian and Middle Eastern come out of this looking pretty bad. And the most surprising thing? Both the director and writer are French. I – what?

  

Taken is a film of exploits; emotion, prostitution, violence, foreigners. The obvious emotional connection that the daughter represents diminishes our connection in the end because it is so obvious; it is there simply to justify a killing spree in Europe. In Bourne, the characters have to be very emotionally restrained, so any emotion that does seep through is all the more precious.

FINAL THOUGHTS...

Picture, if you will, a field of flowers. The overall image is lovely, but there are so many flowers all conglomerating together that you are unable to appreciate any individual flower. It’s just a big block of colour with not much substance. That is Taken’s emotional capacity. Now picture a single fragile flower struggling through a crack in the pavement. Sure it’s surrounded by grimness, but doesn’t that only serve to emphasise the beauty of that one individual flower battling against the odds to survive? That is Bourne. Bourne is built on sleights, hints, subtleties, nuances. The hinted-at past between Nikki and Jason is particularly moving in its ambiguity; it is explored and yet not explored; it is left hanging. The emotion is real because it exists only in the spaces and cracks between one near-death experience and the next. Taken is outward-looking and outward-blaming, while Bourne is introspective and self-critical in a time when I think that is really pertinent. It is politically aware; you only have to take note of the three main cities featured in Ultimatum to realise that (London, Madrid and New York). Taken is essentially a revenge film, and believe me, there is a dictionary-proved difference between revenge and retribution—vindictiveness. Just like that Nietzsche quote suggests, revenge often makes a hypocrite out of the dispenser. Bourne is about hope, and triumphing over adversity, and surviving. It would be so easy for the subject matter to sink into an Orwellian bleakness, but the central standing figure of Jason Bourne doesn’t allow that to happen. Against all the odds, he keeps fighting, and surviving. He never gives up. Ever.

But in terms of Taken, it wasn’t all bad. I cried from terror and empathy during the titular scene when Kim is indeed taken because I thought it was really well-done, I liked the construction-site setting and kind of enjoyed the car chase out of there apart from the decapitation and the fact all the cars looked identical, and the end-credit song is certifiably awesome and completely captures the tone of the film (if you don’t pay attention to the sadomasochistic-sex-saturated lyrics, that is, which might put a whole new Freudian and/or homorepressed spin on the movie)(I do however love the lyrics). I don’t know if I’d quite call it a guilty pleasure, but despite its flaws (and there are MANY), it has grown on me the longer I’ve lived with it in my memory. (The Holly Valance cameo made me chuckle because I just kept thinking that I used to really like that cover of Kiss Kiss she did a few years ago.)

My last disclaimer is that I’m not in any way saying that people shouldn’t enjoy Taken, and on some weird level I actually do. All I’m saying is it’s worthwhile asking yourself what exactly it is you enjoy about it (or any film), because whether the fundamental nastiness of the film was intentional or not, it is there. If you’re unaware of it you may also unwittingly absorb some of its misguided messages that slipped below the mindless-entertainment radar. (Hey, we’ve all done it.) Taken is the kind of film to be enjoyed at a pigs in mud level; Bourne is an intellectual and psychological delight with phenomenal fight sequences to boot, and it never stoops to misanthropy, it always holds out hope, which I am 100% for.

And now I leave you with the respective themes, because they are both so fantastic and totally opposite there was no way I could ever pick between them.

Over and out.