On the Joys of Mindless Action: Taken and Death Race

I know it's award season, and I still have several meaty Oscar-worthy dramas to watch, so I have no excuse for seeing this stuff. But sometimes you just have to choose juvenile pyrotechnics over high art. So without any further ado, my low-brow selections for this week:

1. Taken - Liam Neeson plays a spy who retires from the CIA and relocates to be near his estranged teenage daughter (played by an ageless Maggie Grace, who you might know as the deceased Lostie, Shannon). Hoping to reconnect with her after being missing most of her childhood, Neeson makes several futile attempts to get back into her good graces. Eventually, she wants to see him, but only to get his permission to spend the summer in Paris with her retarded rich friend.

If you've seen the trailer, you know what happens next -- that scene (the phone call whilst being kidnapped) occurs at almost exactly the 30 minute mark. What follows is almost indistinguishable from a pretty decent episode of 24. What that means, for those of you who've never seen 24, is that over the next hour, Liam Neeson flies to Paris and starts beating the shit out of everyone who even caught a whiff of his daughter. There's chasing and punching and interrogating and shooting and torture and blowing shit up and all sorts of other action goodies that any fan of co-writer Luc Besson should enjoy. His daughter is even named Kim, like on 24! And the guy who played George Mason on 24 is the stepdad! This movie has Jack Bauer smeared all over it.

It's pure action - just straight-up, single-minded ass-kicking, with no real twists or turns or otherwise deep dramatic heft, unless you're a sucker for daddy issues or happen to be extremely interested in sex-slave trafficking. It is a definite must if you're a Besson fan. If you're a Neeson fan, it's highly recommended, but not essential. Mindless. Fun. B+

2. Death Race - Speaking of mindless and fun. This is a movie that I would never have seen if not for Netflix. It's the kind of movie that would normally sit around waiting for me to be bored enough to watch it. Fortunately for it, and me, I was just bored enough this morning, and I was not disappointed.

I vaguely remember the original, and this was nothing like that. It's more like this: Imagine if you were playing Super Mario Kart, but the only course was the Mushroom Kingdom Prison Cup, and instead of Yoshi (who happened to be my preferred driver), you have Jason Statham -- you know, the guy who got his start in Guy Ritchie films but now has completely overtaken Vin Diesel as the industry's overly-muscled go-to action star. The method of battle is the same -- you run your vehicle over something that looks like a manhole cover that activates your weapons, which can be projectiles -- missiles, bullets, napalm, etc. (red shells) -- or stuff you leave behind (banana peels) like oil slicks, smoke, etc. You can also bump each other or run each other off the road. The only difference is that intead of "spinning out," your opponent gets killed, in messy and especially unpleasant ways.

You don't need to know any more of the plot that that, other than to say Statham's character gets framed for killing his wife (Fugitive-style) by the warden of the Death Race prison (Longest Yard-style) to be her star driver on a pay-per-view gameshow with millions of viewers (Running Man-style). There's also some poor-man's eye candy in the form of his navigator, who's not only not especially cute, but can't act either (I'm omitting the name of the actress to help her avoid professional embarrassment. That is what a nice guy I am.) Also, I can't understand anything Statham says. And somehow they got Joan Allen and Ian McShane (of Deadwood fame) to star in this thing.

That being said, considering the genre, it was pretty awesome. B