Question for the Week of Sept 24-30: Nic Hilarious Cage

Why, Stolen, why?

Yeah, that's the Question for this week. Have there been many unneccesary movies made in the past? Yes. It's to be expected by now. But the image above is so... funny, ridiculous, mockable - I simply have to highlight it, even before looking into the deeper confusion it represents. Seriously, look at that up there; it's insane.

And here's the trailer:

It's not that a movie like this has to not exist, it's just that audiences already got a picture called Taken, starring Liam Neeson. It came out in 2008, and has a sequel, (the brilliantly-titled Taken 2) coming out this year. Here's the basic plot:

A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who was kidnapped on a trip to Paris to be sold into prostitution.

And here's the trailer for Neeson's original film:

According to the reviews I read or heard, it's a decent action/thriller, if you're looking for a revenge story where that just-perfectly-right-and-yet-gritty-right guy destroys a group of unambigously-evil people doing awful things. What I gleaned from all that is that I wasn't going to see a real story about a character; I'd be watching (basically) justice-porn.

Taken sounded like an excuse to dish out punishment, for everyone who has a strong will of right, and feels that bad things should always be stopped from happening, in a total action-movie kind of way. That kind of movie can be a lot of fun to watch, but that sort of general story hasn't been of interest to me for the last while.

And I can't accept it when it sounds so tailor-made for audiences. If a cinematic tale ends up with a vengeful, brave-and-skilled do-gooder that doles out death in the right, then fine. But that can't work when the tone of the reviews suggests what I thought they suggested. So I felt, "not right now, thanks."

As it is, I'm already un-interested in the concept behind Taken, much less Taken 2. I'm even less thrilled about the inevitable (if box-office conditions so favor by break-even or profitable financial success) Taken 3: Dark of the Rise of the Took.

Can you imagine how I felt when I heard that Nicolas "I've got maybe two great ones in me per decade" Cage was going to star in what sounds like a... a remake set in America instead of Europe so as to also promote ethnic xenophobia? What the h--l?

So here's the plot summary for Stolen:

A former thief frantically searches for his missing daughter, who has been kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a taxi. 

Sort of related, but only just, right? Is that what you're thinking? Here's the Taken 2 trailer:

It can't just be me and the writers that I follow. This whole... thing seems like a sub-sub-genre. It's not my imagination.

Can you just imagine what the basic premise to both of these movies comes out to? Like, what would you hear if the narrator was just simplifying the whole storyline? I would pitch it in something like the voice Bale used as Batman in TDK and TDKR:

Some jerk with a creepy and calm voice calls you... And he has your daughter. You tell him to back off;-
but he laughs and threatens you.
Now you've got an excuse... to rip a man apart.
FOR JUSTICE.

I can't stand the thought of it, personally.