Taken (2009)

Taken follows Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) a divorced and retired CIA operative whose 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) wants to go to Paris but actually intends to follow band U2 around Europe. Arriving in Paris, Kim and her friend Amanda are victim to Albanian sex traffickers who stalk the friends, wanting nothing but to violate their innocence. Taken undoubtedly impacts on the viewer, the narrative has a good structure, and the audience are often left on the edge of their seat, victim to the gritty realism that strikes the teens on screen. The visual style to the film is gripping, often complementing the tone of the sex traffickers as something real and not to be messed with. The film, however, is often very linear, Neeson constantly strives to guess the Albanian's moves leaving the audience with no choice but to wait for the outcome of the film as opposed to an active engagement with the narrative itself.

From the actual kidnapping staged with Kim actually on the phone with dad to Bryan arriving in Paris and immediately causing a pileup outside the airport the film does not take a breath to allow a moment of reflect or psychological explanations for the antagonists motives, as the work in the film is all done for us. One is left wondering if the film was not located in France with rather unique cinematography, would Taken come across as a futuristic James Bond with Neeson as the masculine counterpart. Noticeably the film does contain a contradiction. The cinematography suggests a sense of gritty realism something that creates the tension in the film; whereas the action on screen, however, steps away from this realism, especially in the Yacht scene when Neeson fights off near enough every man on board, contradicting the somewhat practical atmosphere the film was trying to create. Overall, Taken is a satisfying contemporary thriller, adding a new angle to a well established genre, even if it has its flaws throughout.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Filmic reflectivity involves the exploration of the inner workings of Hollywood as a means of attracting an interest from the mass audience; something that Tropic Thunder unremittingly achieves. Not only is the script constructed from one-liners of ongoing humour and absurdity, but the cast (consisting of Ben Stiller and Jack Black) excel in constructing situations that are so illogical, we almost forget that we are watching a product of their misfortunes- creating the film Four Leaf set in Vietnam.

Inevitably, filming does not go as calculated, and once the director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) dies, the actors are driven into disequilibrium, facing the ‘Flaming Dragon’ gang in their province of the Golden Triangle. The humour spawns from the characters diverse cultural representations which merge tightly together creating a ‘Tropic Thunder’; not a thunder of rage and darkness but one of obscene humour and absurdity which connect with us directly. What could have easily been a film of meaningless gags and torture actually resulted in a potent summer blockbuster showing significance from its opening.

Resident Evil : Extinction (2007)

Resident Evil: Extinction follows the path of Alice (Milla Jovovich), who is now alone in the desert wastelands of the remains of the United States. Alice now has superhuman strength and psionic abilities gained from her brief imprisonment by Umbrella. With a whole new locale in the desert with an isolated fill, the film tries to somehow fill this sense of isolation with a rather complicated, hi-tech series of action sequences which actually erased what was a least a little scary from the previous two films.

Where the first films used the locale to create a sense of tension from this mindless creatures, the setting in this film relies so heavily on its action sequences and technology that it somehow loses its sense of purpose, disorientating the feel that made the series unique in the first place. It’s even more humorous how the film pays homage to the likes of Day of the Dead with their experimental ‘zombie’ but turns away from what made them films work into something unnecessarily complex and technological as if to develop on something that was already good in the first place. Resident Evil: Extinction without doubt tried to be ‘different’ from your average zombie horror film, but its own technology got in the way of what could have been a reasonable sequel to a series that has never quite set off anyway.