LUC BESSON - MOVIE REVIEWS TAKEN

MOVIE REVIEWS TAKEN

Before Taken faces the Super Bowl, it is facing critics -- for an equally brutal encounter. Produced and co-written by France's Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel, the film is being savaged in many reviews. "In trying to broaden their scale to interest a big American audience, Besson and Morel are as convincing as Marçel Marçeau doing John Wayne," writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times comments that Besson's movies "tend to be predictably homogeneous, with more or less the same look (glossy), sound (blaring) and pace (relentless). That more or less describes Taken, as well as innumerable action flicks from Hollywood to Hong Kong, of course, though this digitally dreary-looking movie also gleefully trades on the specter of American vigilante justice." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times pays Besson a left-handed compliment, saying that he generally "turns out high-quality trash," while Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel remarks that "Besson's espresso-jag thrillers are all the caffeine an action fan needs until the summer thrill rides arrive." And while Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times observes that the movie "can't help being unintentionally silly at times," Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle concludes, "I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun."

30/01/2009