No, Bryan's not dangerous. The world he lives in is.

Taken 3

(2014)

(SPOILERS) The Taken series’ rep generally seems to be that the first one was good and then Olivier Megaton took over and did for them with his visually dyslexic direction. This is certainly partly true. Megaton’s film grammar is the most incoherent this side of Marc Forster (one wonders why producer Luc Besson, a master of visual storytelling, has repeatedly shown such confidence in him). But the first movie really only has good direction on its side. And Liam Neeson killing bad guys in unrepentant and unreconstituted manner, of course, which can only go so far. As such, Taken 3 is something of a step forward, or at least offers a tentative balancing act. Megaton’s direction remains stupefyingly bad, but there is actually a halfway engaging plot that musters a modicum of interest.

I’m not going to get to carried away praising the picture, mind, since the action is the main draw, and it’s blunderingly inept (there’s a particularly road chase that is downright shocking in its utter lack of correlation between one shot and any other). At another point he manages to drive a car backwards down a lift shaft, for reasons best known to himself. There’s maybe one sequence in which the staging is sufficiently clear to engage (Liam taking out Russians in the drinks section of a convenience store).

Besson and co-writer Robert Mark Kamen had ditched the evil Albanians of the first two movies and gone the reliable route – possibly compulsory, given recent evidence – of making the heavies Russians. They’re well represented by (Brit) Andrew Howard, who had a highly memorable episode in the second season of Banshee (he’s also currently in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I’ve given up on that) and (Brit) Sam Spruell.

Underlining that, even if they’re not playing to nationality, British actors are the go-to-baddies to go to, the real villain of the piece is (Brit) Dougray Scott (playing an American, since we know they’re ultimately much more villainous than Russians). While the plot doesn’t mark him out as the bad guy from the start, the recasting of Xander Berkley’s Stuart St John (now married to Famke Janssen’s Leonore, but not for long) is a fairly hefty clue that something is amiss. You don’t cast the iconic villain from Mission: Impossible 2 just to relegate him to the role of the inconspicuous grieving husband.

So this starts from a different place, thankfully. Kim (Maggie Grace, at college and the definition of a mature student) is not kidnapped (well, not until right at the end), and Bryan Mills is framed for the murder of Leonore during the first 10 minutes. It’s a leaf out of The Bourne Supermacy’s book and, as beloved Kimmy is still in the picture, Bryan can continue to dote unwholesomely. Being a superspy, he can dodge the authorities with ease, of course and he even gets a little help from his friends (as before, Leland Orser is the standout).

Making matters all the more digestible is dogged detective Forest Whitaker on Bryan’s trail. Whitaker’s flourishing all the usual Forest Whitaker ticks and quirks, but that’s fine by me. If there’s any movie where that’s welcome, it’s a redundant Taken sequel. And it’s even fine that the beats of his character wanting Bryan to come in while simultaneously admiring his dedication to his craft are entirely rote; again, tolerance levels for that kind of thing come down to the actor (Don Harvey also appears as one of Forest’s men, Snickers from Hudson Hawk, if you’d wondered where he’d got to).

Neeson is as somnambulant as ever, rolling over and surrendering to the absurdity of his character without so much as a glimmer of knowingness (“Inappropriate, huh?” asks Bryan after bringing Kim a giant panda – not a real one – and champagne). So much so that, when a cop advises Bryan “This is going to end badly for you” and Bryan responds “Don’t be such a pessimist” you wonder if Besson and Kamen got their scripts mixed up (they tend to have about a dozen on the go at any one time by the looks of things).

Along the way, Bryan indulges some obligatory waterboarding (because we need to be reminded the practice is totally justifiable as long as you’re a good guy really) and delivers a ream of exposition of how Dougray done it while simultaneously beating the shit out of him. By this point, the picture has outstayed its welcome by a good 20 minutes (Taken 2 at least had the good manners to be short).

I somehow don’t think anyone’s going to be campaigning for the return of Bryan Mills in a few years the way they have for Jason Bourne, although Taken 3 has made more than enough to justify another outing. Neeson would be best advised to leave his taciturn hard man roles for a while, as two a year was at least one too many for anyone to cope with. Megaton shouldn’t be let anywhere near a franchise he can harm (so why not give him Megatron to play with) and Besson’s about to embark on a big sci-fi epic. Hopefully it will be as fun as he can be (The Fifth Element) rather than as pompously deficient as he’s also capable of (Lucy).

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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The Verdict (1982)
(SPOILERS) Sidney Lumet’s return to the legal arena, with results every bit as compelling as 12 Angry Men a quarter of a century earlier. This time the focus is on the lawyer, in the form of Paul Newman’s washed-up ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, given a case that finally matters to him. In less capable hands, The Verdict could easily have resorted to a punch-the-air piece of Hollywood cheese, but, thanks to Lumet’s earthy instincts and a sharp, unsentimental screenplay from David Mamet, this redemption tale is one of the genre’s very best.

And it could easily have been otherwise. The Verdict went through several line-ups of writer, director and lead, before reverting to Mamet’s original screenplay. There was Arthur Hiller, who didn’t like the script. Robert Redford, who didn’t like the subsequent Jay Presson Allen script and brought in James Bridges (Redford didn’t like that either). Finally, the producers got the hump with the luxuriantly golden-haired star for meetin…

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
(SPOILERS) The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was "comparatively minor and light-hitting" and "lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries". Far from deficits, for my money these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and the Wasp; it understands exactly the zone its operating in, yielding greater dividends than the three most recent prior Marvel entries the review cites in its efforts at point scoring.

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

The simple fact is, your killer is in your midst. Your killer is one of you.

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I’ve always rather liked this one, basic as it is in premise. If the title consciously evokes The Magnificent Seven, to flippant effect, the content is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but played out with titans of their respective crafts – including John Steed, naturally – encountering diminishing returns. It also boasts a cast of soon-to-be-famous types (Charlotte Rampling, Brian Blessed, Donald Sutherland), and the return of one John Hollis (2.16: Warlock, 4.7: The Cybernauts). Kanwitch ROCKS!

Never mind. You may be losing a carriage, but he’ll be gaining a bomb.

The Avengers 5.13: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station
Continuing a strong mid-season run, Brian Clemens rejigs one of the dissenting (and departing) Roger Marshall's scripts (hence "Brian Sheriff") and follows in the steps of the previous season's The Girl from Auntie by adding a topical-twist title (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum came out a year earlier). If this is one of those stories where you know from the first who's doing what to whom, the actual mechanism for the doing is a strong and engaging one, and it's pepped considerably by a supporting cast including one John Laurie (2.11: Death of a Great Dane, 3.2: Brief for Murder).

I freely chose my response to this absurd world. If given the opportunity, I would have been more vigorous.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
(SPOILERS) I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ‘70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the case, but I ended up wondering if it might not be ideal fodder for retelling as a miniseries.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
(SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison.

Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

You use a scalpel. I prefer a hammer.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
(SPOILERS) The latest instalment of the impossibly consistent in quality Mission: Impossible franchise has been hailed as the best yet, and with but a single dud among the sextet that’s a considerable accolade. I’m not sure it's entirely deserved – there’s a particular repeated thematic blunder designed to add some weight in a "hero's validation" sense that not only falls flat, but also actively detracts from the whole – but as a piece of action filmmaking, returning director Christopher McQuarrie has done it again. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an incredible accomplishment, the best of its ilk this side of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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