A cinematic peek behind the curtain of the raid that ended with Osama Bin Laden’s assassination in May 2011 is certainly an intriguing hook for a movie, but it’s far from the whole story that unfolds in Kathryn Bigelow’s tense, taut thriller Zero Dark Thirty. Achieving intimacy in this gigantic narrative about a decade-long manhunt…
You don’t see the late ’70s or early ’80s get represented in the movies very often. Audiences are used to seeing movies set in the ’60s, during World War II or in the Old West, but seeing action take place in 1980 just feels foreign. Everybody still smokes (even on airplanes), shirt collars are enormous,…
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…
Jason Bourne is one of the more intriguing film characters of the past decade. He methodically and purposefully found out who he was, who was responsible for his condition, and attempted to bring everything back together again. Even better, he was not a superhero; Jason was just a guy who went through a lot of…
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)…
Releasing a mindless war movie under the precedent that it’s “like no other in Hollywood’s history” was not the right way to convey reverence for our troops. While Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh’s Act of Valor shows respect for the men and women in uniform overseas, it ignores the complexities of their situation. Once intended…
