Last week we watched Taken. Co-written and produced by French (but I think he wishes he was American) auteur Luc Besson, starring Liam Neeson, this film was number one at the US box office earlier this year, thanks to an effective trailer and lack of competition when it was released. Neeson is ex-CIA. His daughter travels to Paris and within hours of arrival is kidnapped to be sold into the white sex slave trade. Neeson, once an actual actor, becomes a one man demolition squad, taking apart all of Paris in his quest to get his daughter back. It’s the kind of fantasy in which one man with a gun goes up against 10 men and kills them all without receiving so much as a scratch in return. But as grade B action films go, it’s effective and entertaining and at 91 minutes, it gets where it’s going quickly enough. Taken scored all of 40% with “top critics” at Rotten Tomatoes.

Tonight, without thinking about the connection, we watched Spartan. (Actually it was because earlier today we watched Untouchables and I was still in a Mamet mood.) This 2004 film starring Val Kilmer, William H. Macy and Ed O’Neill was written and directed by David Mamet. With a production budget of $20 million, it grossed all of $2 million in the US. It’s difficult to talk about the plot without giving away the myriad twists and turns and surprises, but it’s probably safe to tell you that the President’s daughter is kidnapped and sold into the sex trade. Or did she die in a boating accident off Martha’s Vineyard? The film is brutal, cynical, blunt. It’s very much of a piece with Mamet’s other “con” films including House of Games, Spanish Prisoner, Heist and Redbelt.

As a writer, Mamet has given us Glengarry Glen Ross, Postman Always Rings Twice, Wag the Dog, Ronin, Untouchables (among others).

Spartan scored just 53% with top critics at Rotten Tomatoes, though the NY Times said that it “is a vigorous and engrossing genre exercise that manages the difficult trick of being both logically meticulous and genuinely surprising.”

And it holds up to repeated viewings, too. You might consider renting it one day if you’re in the mood for something different.

Untouchables – Brian De Palma directing. Mamet screenplay. Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro starring. Ennio Morricone score. Costumes by Giorgio Armani! And who else but De Palma would have the balls to steal the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin? I love Vincent Canby’s review in the NY Times when it first opened – “of such entertaining order that it almost redeems Hollywood’s current reputation for idiotic profligacy and total irrelevance.” What would Canby have thought of Taken? Easy enough to guess.

Hongkie Town
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