Taken (2008) - Thiller

Taken (2008) - This Liam Neeson vehicle barrels forward at a breakneck pace without thought of whether or not it makes sense or not. It doesn't but that was not enough for me to poo poo this flick. It is an action movie and as such has to just get me onto the edge of my seat and then keep me there for a while. It accomplished that and so even though police are nonexistent in France, and this agent can act with impunity I was into the story. Neeson is a retired CIA operative who reluctantly allows his daughter from his failed marriage, to go off to France with a friend. Very quickly, approximately 3 hours after arriving the girls are abducted and sold into sex slavery. Neeson gets hot on the trail and tracks down and kills many people in the taught plot that leads to saving his daughter before she loses her virginity. This is it! Mostly the action is good and Neeson pulls off being the competent and dangerous agent. Maggie Grace is ridiculous pretending to be his 17 year old daughter. So obviously in her mid twenties I just do not accept the casting decision. There is no one bad guy which really is a shortcoming of the movie. It would have been more interesting to have a single evil bastard for Neeson to get in the end. Writer Luc Besson wrote one of my alltime favorite movies, "Leon, the Professional" but here things are more quick hit and the character development although present is really in the way. Overall though I was on the ride and it past the simple test of action movie.
Rating (5.7)

Deadgirl (2008) - Horror

Deadgirl (2008) - This movie is not what you would expect. Two high school boys find a girl who can't die chained to a slab in an old abandoned mental hospital. The boys were obviously poorly cast, with each looking way past high school age. Ricky (Shiloh Fernandez) is 24 and J.T. (Noah Segan) is 26, of course this is a common Hollywood issue. Once the boys find the nude woman (Jenny Spain) instead of calling the police like any sane person would do, J.T. pushes for a free sex slave arrangement. The rest of the movie for the most part is J.T. fucking the dead girl and Ricky struggling with the immorality of it. To create tension we learn that J.T. has experimented killing her, but she comes back to life. Ricky has a second and third plot line in the girl at school he likes and her dickhead Boyfriend, and his shitty home life. Another friend is brought in by J.T. so he does not have to rape alone creating the risk of discovery. Mostly this movies is boring, at least to me. I found the dead girl parts repulsive and the rest unoriginal. The climax builds as others learn of the dead girl and we learn her bite is going to make the bitten like her. She starts to rot, I am not really sure why, she was locked rot free in the room for years but maybe it is a side effect of being repeatedly harmed and raped. J.T. wants to take a giant step and continue his rape fest and Ricky wants it all to end, how will it turn out?

Rating (3.7)