I was sitting at home this evening and watching TV - something that I do a little too frequently these days - when I noticed that Taken, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen's utterly satisfying film, was playing on FX. Let me pause and admit that I have become, over the last few years, an unashamed fan of action movies. For whatever mysterious reason I find that predictable plot lines and gratuitous pyrotechnics soothe me, no matter how badly executed they may be (perhaps this is an appropriate time to admit that I have seen Prince of Persia: Sands of Time...and didn't really regret it). I generally don't pay close attention to action movies while watching them, and yet, they heavily reward my periodic glances. That being said, among the general category of action movies there are those that do actually deserve close attention, and I think that Taken is an example of this small subset.
The first time that I had the pleasure of watching Liam Neeson tear Paris apart in the search for his daughter, I was sitting in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park. Admittedly, my recollection of that viewing is a little clouded thanks to the brandy fortified red wine that was, inexplicably, my summer drink of choice (ah, 2009...), but subsequent opportunities afforded by cable television have allowed me to fill in the blanks. To summarize: in the film, Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA operative who is utterly devoted to his daughter. Patriotic, self-reliant, ruggedly handsome and a family man - how can you not root for this guy?! Liam's daughter goes on a vacation to Paris with a friend, and they end up being kidnapped and shuttled into a hellish underworld of drugs, prostitution and cliched eastern European villains. Liam jets to Paris and uses what appears to be the stamina and skill of a UFC champion combined with an uncanny ability to dodge bullets to ensure that the baddies reap what they have sown. I hardly need to point out that Taken's moral universe verges on the Manichean, which is exactly what makes it so gratifying. There is no nuance to good and bad, which is why things that might appear brutal in other films (e.g. a jerry-rigged electric chair where the current is conducted through a pair of nails that also serve to secure the victim) seem like prudent justice, and why the (do I even need to write spoiler alert here?) absolutely predictable ending is still so, so excellent.
To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the ethical world presented in Taken is precisely who falls on the wrong side of the tracks, and why they've landed there. Aside from the stock Euro peons and an Arab sheikh who represents the ultimate source of mammon, there are two notable villains. The first is Jean-Claude, Liam's French counterpart and an old friend from the Cold War. No longer a field agent, he now collects bribes and lets the Albanians do what they want. The second is Saint-Clair, the organizer of a high class auction - one that traffics in beautiful young women. These men are not simply thugs, nor are they evil in the same banal way as Arendt's Eichmann. They recognize that what they do is wrong; they're simply able to justify it to themselves with a higher purpose: a perverted form of pietas (familial devotion). Jean-Claude rationalizes his corruption by arguing that he uses his ill-gotten cash to care for his family. In fact, the only way in which Neeson is finally able to bend Jean-Claude to his will is by threatening Mrs. Jean-Claude's life. The audience's view of Saint-Clair's motivation is not so clear, as he is only alive for approximately 227 seconds, but within that brief time we are informed that he has two children, and that he views his auction as a business, nothing more. Ironically, pietas is the same value that fuels Liam's bonfire of retribution. Really, the flaw that marks Jean-Claude and Saint-Clair as evil is their selfish inability to consider the consequences of their actions (and hence, alter their behavior) in the course of their pursuit of money.
I think that to anyone who hasn't lived underground for the last three years this sounds very familiar. It serves as an analogy (intended or not) with financial professionals who, while angling for a slice of the good life (the good life being a Rolls Royce, yacht, helicopter, Learjet, hoverboat, etc.), sunk the economy. My best evidence for this comparison is an exchange between Saint-Clair and Neeson:
SAINT-CLAIR : You must understand, it was just business!
NEESON : It was all personal to me.
What two line dialogue could better encapsulate the economic turmoil of the last few years?! As many accounts have detailed (I am largely indebted to Michael Lewis' The Big Short and Charles Ferguson's Inside Job) the mortgage crisis was built upon irresponsible and foolish financial behavior - behavior that was incentivized by the unholy amount of cash that the people working mortgage desks could make. Before it became clear that many of the mortgages were rotten, traders at large banks bought billions of dollars worth of them. After it became clear, those same traders started hedging and salesmen at the same banks began to push the mortgages onto less savvy consumers. Not only did the mere whiff of lucre associated with mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations repackaging those securities and credit default swaps betting against those CDOs blind people to the responsibility that they had to assess the real value of financial instruments, it obfuscated the deeper implications of the market’s movements: the effect that business had on the personal lives of millions of Americans. Despite the fact that many of us never chose to invest in mortgages or decided to take out NINJA ("no income, no job, no assets" - a short hand description of the borrower) loans for ourselves, we have all felt the effects of the economic downturn, whether they are manifested through the job market, diminished government programs, poor stock performance or frozen salaries and cut hours.
The first time that I had the pleasure of watching Liam Neeson tear Paris apart in the search for his daughter, I was sitting in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park. Admittedly, my recollection of that viewing is a little clouded thanks to the brandy fortified red wine that was, inexplicably, my summer drink of choice (ah, 2009...), but subsequent opportunities afforded by cable television have allowed me to fill in the blanks. To summarize: in the film, Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA operative who is utterly devoted to his daughter. Patriotic, self-reliant, ruggedly handsome and a family man - how can you not root for this guy?! Liam's daughter goes on a vacation to Paris with a friend, and they end up being kidnapped and shuttled into a hellish underworld of drugs, prostitution and cliched eastern European villains. Liam jets to Paris and uses what appears to be the stamina and skill of a UFC champion combined with an uncanny ability to dodge bullets to ensure that the baddies reap what they have sown. I hardly need to point out that Taken's moral universe verges on the Manichean, which is exactly what makes it so gratifying. There is no nuance to good and bad, which is why things that might appear brutal in other films (e.g. a jerry-rigged electric chair where the current is conducted through a pair of nails that also serve to secure the victim) seem like prudent justice, and why the (do I even need to write spoiler alert here?) absolutely predictable ending is still so, so excellent.
To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the ethical world presented in Taken is precisely who falls on the wrong side of the tracks, and why they've landed there. Aside from the stock Euro peons and an Arab sheikh who represents the ultimate source of mammon, there are two notable villains. The first is Jean-Claude, Liam's French counterpart and an old friend from the Cold War. No longer a field agent, he now collects bribes and lets the Albanians do what they want. The second is Saint-Clair, the organizer of a high class auction - one that traffics in beautiful young women. These men are not simply thugs, nor are they evil in the same banal way as Arendt's Eichmann. They recognize that what they do is wrong; they're simply able to justify it to themselves with a higher purpose: a perverted form of pietas (familial devotion). Jean-Claude rationalizes his corruption by arguing that he uses his ill-gotten cash to care for his family. In fact, the only way in which Neeson is finally able to bend Jean-Claude to his will is by threatening Mrs. Jean-Claude's life. The audience's view of Saint-Clair's motivation is not so clear, as he is only alive for approximately 227 seconds, but within that brief time we are informed that he has two children, and that he views his auction as a business, nothing more. Ironically, pietas is the same value that fuels Liam's bonfire of retribution. Really, the flaw that marks Jean-Claude and Saint-Clair as evil is their selfish inability to consider the consequences of their actions (and hence, alter their behavior) in the course of their pursuit of money.
I think that to anyone who hasn't lived underground for the last three years this sounds very familiar. It serves as an analogy (intended or not) with financial professionals who, while angling for a slice of the good life (the good life being a Rolls Royce, yacht, helicopter, Learjet, hoverboat, etc.), sunk the economy. My best evidence for this comparison is an exchange between Saint-Clair and Neeson:
SAINT-CLAIR : You must understand, it was just business!
NEESON : It was all personal to me.
What two line dialogue could better encapsulate the economic turmoil of the last few years?! As many accounts have detailed (I am largely indebted to Michael Lewis' The Big Short and Charles Ferguson's Inside Job) the mortgage crisis was built upon irresponsible and foolish financial behavior - behavior that was incentivized by the unholy amount of cash that the people working mortgage desks could make. Before it became clear that many of the mortgages were rotten, traders at large banks bought billions of dollars worth of them. After it became clear, those same traders started hedging and salesmen at the same banks began to push the mortgages onto less savvy consumers. Not only did the mere whiff of lucre associated with mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations repackaging those securities and credit default swaps betting against those CDOs blind people to the responsibility that they had to assess the real value of financial instruments, it obfuscated the deeper implications of the market’s movements: the effect that business had on the personal lives of millions of Americans. Despite the fact that many of us never chose to invest in mortgages or decided to take out NINJA ("no income, no job, no assets" - a short hand description of the borrower) loans for ourselves, we have all felt the effects of the economic downturn, whether they are manifested through the job market, diminished government programs, poor stock performance or frozen salaries and cut hours.
It would be nice if we could watch the demise of financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide Financial and MF Global[1] with the same glee that Taken inspires in me, or at least some measure of schadenfreude. The truth is though, that, like it or not, our lives are all dramatically affected by what happens on the floors of stock markets across the world, on the desks of analysts in midtown Manhattan, on the screens of traders in bright, fluorescent offices.
If I may simultaneously paraphrase John Donne, and twist his words to my own ends: next time you walk by the NYSE, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
[1] Not of the same set, I know, but, in my opinion, just as blameworthy for being lax with customers' money and taking a highly leveraged, risky position.
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