Granted we’ve all enjoyed our fair share of them, but it is still a nice change of pace to watch a Hollywood film that isn’t one of those big budget, high-stakes films with product placements, massive CGI explosions and recycled plots. Tommy Lee Jones’ The Homesman is a tour-de-force western on the opposite side of…
If there is a mindset that is getting on my nerves more and more as it becomes steadily more prominent, it’s the idea that a work (especially a film) possessing a certain level of either style or ostentatiousness is in and of itself worthy of praise. It’s an ideology that gave the laughably atrocious 2002…
Remakes come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, some more similar to their source material than others. The mold that Brick Mansions was formed in is the kind that thrives on familiarity, though it’s probably a good thing in this case. An English-language update of the 2004 French flick “District 13,” Brick Mansions…
In 2008 audiences were wowed by ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills’ (Liam Neeson) skills in “Taken” as he put them to good use rescuing his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) who had been snatched whilst on a holiday in Paris by Albanian gangsters. In Taken 2 it’s now a year or so on and Mills is called…
Rhetorical question, I know, but why would a man take his family to a foreign country where he knows he’s not the most liked guy of the locals? It’s what Liam Neeson does in Taken 2 and as payment for it, he and his wife are kidnapped by the father of the kidnapper Neeson killed…
Terrorists have the memory of an elephant and a burning need for revenge. Just as in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance,” the antagonist in the action-thriller Taken 2 has a score to settle with the protagonist, who just so happens to be a retired law enforcer. As you may recall in “Taken,” Bryan Mills (Neeson)…
Witty retorts have always been part of the Hollywood macho man’s arsenal (see every Schwarzenegger or Stallone flick). Unfortunately, the punch line spewing protagonist in James Mather and St. Leger’s Lockout stands as an obvious — and desperate — attempt to recreate the ‘80s action hero and nothing more. Co-written by Luc Besson (who, in…
