Few movies captivate me to the point where I’m interested in watching them a second time. Sure, I’ll stay with a repeat movie for a while if I happen to chance on it during the second quarter of a boring basketball game or a slow Saturday night of television, but I’m not the type to watch and rewatch the same thing. There are too many new shows and material on DVD. But when it came to watching Taken for the second time in a few months, I jumped on the chance. From where I’m sitting, this is one of the great ones, and even as the closing credits roll, I’m thrilled to trumpet its stellar points.
For those who don’t know, Taken is an action-packed thriller in the style of the Bourne trilogy or the latest set of Bond explosions: it’s shot intimately with plenty of in-your-face action, terse dialogue, and a significant enough plot to make you care about the characters involved. Taken makes you care because it patiently sets up the relationship (or lack thereof) between Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and Kim (Maggie Grace), and then throws that relationship into complete disarray with the kidnapping of Kim in Paris by human traffickers.
During my trip to the theater, I missed the first ten minutes of the film and lost the tender (if hokey) build up of the relationship lost between the father-daughter combo, but still found the movie to be a powerful display of God’s love for us. When Kim finally cries out, “You came for me,” and Bryan responds, “I told you that I would,” a Christian can’t help but see the ways in which Jesus crossed every boundary and broke every rule to set us free. Granted, the best line is still “I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t let my daughter go I will find you and kill you,” but that isn’t the most meaningful one given the circumstance. If anything, it makes the closing of the movie more meaningful to know the beginning… but please, this is amazing!
Once again, besides the nonstop (exclude the first fifteen minutes) action and amazing fight scenes, the imagery of what happens and the social consciousness that should occur stand out starkly in contrast to the average thriller. Bryan has the power to step into a violent situation where his daughter is involved and rescue her from it, but not every father has the skills learned in the intelligence business nor the violent tendencies Bryan possesses. And for better or worse, Bryan uses the skills at his disposal to end the human trafficking around his daughter, but we have no idea what happens to most of the other girls.
Which, if I reflect on it, makes me think about our common day situations. Captain Richard Phillips was rescued by Navy Seals, but many others remain captive to Somalian pirates. What should our expectation be? Should Navy experts only rescue those who are American and not rescue those from other countries, or should those other countries be expected to rescue their own? How are we all complicit in sin, and in sadness, and the mistreatment of others everywhere? Watch for those who are complicit in the human trafficking, even those who have families of their own, but who claim that it is just business or too dangerous for them to be involved.
In the end, Taken will thrill you but give you chills as well. Until everyone is free, we are all guilty, and some have special skills to make it right. But each of us can do something. Will it be you?
