Okay people lets get started here because I want to talk about two movies that I have seen recently. One was a new release and one was an older movie rented on DVD. One of these movies was brilliant and the other... well lets just say it was such a disappointment not even the pizza afterwards could raise my spirits as they tail spun in to the mountain of awful media waste. Anyway, lets not delay anymore...
Taken
Okay lets start with the obvious. This movie was rented and recommended by a good friend of mine stating it was "like a traditional action movie". This interested me almost instantly as action movies have taken quite a painful dip in to the river of grit and realism, heros are real people and struggle through their hardships to the glorious end scene where some people are dead and some people are alive but the audience understand that this was the triumph of a regular person. Don't get me wrong I love that aspect of many action movies but it does get a bit boring after a while. Taken on the other hand, this guy is almost invincible, taking no hits and never missing. He easily cons his way in to a room of criminals and proceeds to take out every single one of them, well except the one guy he captures to interrogate, and we'll talk about that scene later.
Now another major aspect of this movie that really made me enjoy it is simply the lead actor. Liam Neeson is superb. I've never seen him in a movie that I didn't like, in fact he is one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie Love Actually. He is a retired undisclosed government institute agent, divorced and overly protective of his daughter. Can you guess the plot yet? That's right! His daughter is kidnapped. Kidnapped by the french criminal underworld no less. Which Liam Neeson learns of while on the phone to his daughter as she is kidnapped resulting in one of the greatest phone calls ever captured on film.
Liam Neeson:
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
Holy crap was that not the coolest thing to say to the guys who just kidnapped your daughter? Of course Liam Neeson's voice makes it. This guy has just found out his daughter has been kidnapped and he comes out with this? The guy is so cool, calm and collected that it just tells to audience one thing and one thing only...
Don't. Mess. With. Liam. Neeson.
Now remember that interrogation scene I mention earlier? Well this is what makes it so good. Neeson has the guy tied to a chair. He then proceeds to stab 6 inch nails in to this guys knees with his bare hands, nooks them up to the electrical mains and turns it on. The whole time he does this he explains how it's so much easier to do this now then when he was still an active member of the undisclosed government institution. He keeps doing this till the guy finally tells Neeson all he needs to know. But does Neeson let him go after being so 'cooprative'? Of course not! He just turns the power and just walks out and leaves the guy lit up like Christmas. Once again everyone...
Don't. Mess. With. Liam. Neeson.
Now Liam Neeson doen't take a single wound for the entire movie until it's climax when he has his final battle where he is shot in the arm, slashed once across the back and again on his arm all while fighting this criminal leader. He does all this without sleeping or resting. He leaves the US, goes directly to France and where his daughter went missing and does not stop until he is done. The man is a machine in this movie bent on getting his daughter back, which of course he does.
This movies action was not only fun and entertaining but kind of smart too. The ways Neeson gets around finding information and taking out these kidnappers is just an awesome thing to behold on screen and in some cases hilarious to witness. This movie was entertaining and the action drew me in so much my eyes were glued to the screen, the whole experienced by Liam Neeson's performance. I would recommend this film to anyone anytime. Just remember...
Don't. Mess. With. Liam. Neeson.
Ninja Assassin
Here we go people, as by now you may have guessed this is the movie that I hated and was also one I saw in the cinema. That's right I paid to see this at a cinema. I saw the poster above and instantly thought, that will be awful but how can you mess up ninjas killing each other? I wish that thought had never entered my head because it made me somehow hype this film up as being a fantastic martial arts movie with ninjas fighting it out with other ninjas. How wrong I was...
But wait... Ninjas did fight each other and there was a lot of violence involving ninjas. But it was so bland and disappointing. How can someone make Ninjas boring? I didn't understand it. But there I was a few days ago looking up at the end credits to an awesome film, turning to me ninja loving friend thinking... How did they mess that up so badly? Seriously how?
I will admit there was two specific parts of this film I did enjoy, three if you count finally seeing the end credits. The first was... well the opening. We see some guy getting a tattoo. He is clearly a moron but we move on. He starts acting all tough to the guy giving him a tattoo for 'disrespecting him' and suddenly the lights going out. The old guy gets scared and tells the moron and his followers of other morons about how he survived a ninja attack then guess what happens.... I surprised me anyway. This guys head is cut in two, and I don't mean vertically. It was cut just under his nose so as the body hit the floor his tongue flapped out everywhere. This is where the awesomeness stopped...
That is until the other scene I enjoyed. In a flash back we see the main character making his first kill as a member of the clan. He doesn't seem to like it however and he explains this to the leader of the ninja clan. You can't leave the clan though and our hero must now fight a bunch of fully trained ninjas on a rooftop in the rain. Cliche setting but looked fantastic.
I don't know what it was about this movie but it kept reminding me of other, much better films. There was one moment of the film that looked like it was trying to mimic 300 with a long shot entirely in slow-motion. Another part of the movie reminded me of Lord of the Rings. How you ask? Well let me explain... The ninjas for some reason love to whisper random stuff as they sneak about, which for starters is a bad idea but anyway. Then they were sneaking in to a room where they were going to kill someone who was asleep in bed. Remember when the Ringwraiths did the EXACT same thing in Fellowship of the Ring? Then there was the way they showed people getting hit with shurikens in slow-motion that reminded me of The Matrix. Even the final confrontation between the master ninja and the hero ninja reminded of something else. The hero's final finishing blow looked like a slightly darker version of Cloud's Omnislash from Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. I don't know what they were trying to do but I left the cinema wanting to see all those movies instead of the one I had just paid to see.
Ninja Assassins was an awful movie. It has killed everything about the ninja that made ninjas so awesome. The plot was weak, the acting terrible and the action left a lot to be desired. Never see this film, ever. I mean it. This film needed Liam Neeson in it because as well all should know by now...
Don't. Mess. With. Liam. Neeson.
Thanks for Reading!
EpicFlyFire
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