TAKEN It to the Limit

by Dr. Craig Reid

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking for a ransom, I can tell you, I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills acquired over a very long career in the shadows, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will 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." So says Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) to the men who kidnap his daughter in the thriller TAKEN, Neeson's first action flick since he stomped his fists and feet upon the stage in BATMAN BEGINS as Henri Ducard, pseudo-sifu to Bruce Wayne, and hence the first master to teach Batman.

Action roles are nothing new to Neeson, who excelled in films like EXCALIBUR (1981), DARKMAN (1990), ROB ROY (1995), STAR WARS: EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999), BATMAN BEGINS, and now, TAKEN. Neeson was one of the frontrunners to become the next James Bond, but that was quickly nipped in the bud when his wife quipped that if he played Bond they would not be married. But now Neeson is a different kind of agent: Bryan?Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA "Preventer" who is bent out of an already-violent shape into a new, even more vicious one as he breaks up a human/sex trafficking ring that tries to use Mills' daughter to drive Mills around the bend, only to face a man bent on busting their ring into pieces as his martial arts prowess flows like blood in water.

Before fighting in films, Neeson faced several tougher battles. During his teenage years he was a Northern Ireland boxing champion and had to fight for his life after a near-fatal crash. Although this Irish lad has a lilt like sand and glue, his warrior looks are akin to broken-nosed toughness and searing, see-through eyes and his confident, gentle mien masks Celtic blood which can spurt power whenever he needs it, traits amply demonstrated in TAKEN. The movie has been called part BOURNE IDENTITY and part TERMINATOR, but Neeson is by no means robotic when it comes to the action. In fact, he is a supple snake that venomously strikes his prey with poisonous fists, spitting gunfire and constricting chokes.

Neeson loved the physicality of the role as he spent many weeks learning the complexities of Parkour before and during filming, where he got together with a couple of guys in Paris who also taught him the fight techniques that required actual contact with an opponent. He jokingly shares, "Every time I saw my wife she thought I had been beaten up. The funny thing is?I had.

"Although I was 54 at time of making this film," he reflects, "I thought there is no way that I would be asked to do anything like this again over the next few years so I may as well just jump into it with everything. It was great training and in the end the director wanted me to do as much of my own action as possible. I mean, he did not ask me to jump off a bridge or anything like that, jump out in front of a bus, but sometimes I got the feeling he was thinking about it."

When I first introduced Luc Besson to Hong Kong action films back in 1997 during a visit to his home in Malibu Beach, he told me that he was impressed by the frenetic pace, creativity, and novelty, and that one day he would find a way to use that style of action. As a man of his word, Besson produced Jet Li's KISS OF THE DRAGON four years later, and opened the flood gates for his own world of martial arts-stylized films such as THE TRANSPORTER (2002), DISTRICT B13 (2004), UNLEASHED (2005), TRANSPORTER 2 (2005), TRANSPORTER 3 (2008) and ONG BAK (2003) (as an uncredited executive producer).

And what better fellow countryman to capture the essence of a Luc Besson actioner than director Pierre Morel, who was the cinematographer on Jet Li's UNLEASHED and Corey Yuen's THE TRANSPORTER, and the director of DISTRICT B13. Thumbing along on the ride is veteran screenwriter Robert Kamen who wrote the KARATE KID and TRANSPORTER films as well as KISS OF THE DRAGON.

"Luc come up with the idea of TAKEN after he had met with a Paris police officer who told him about this underworld of kidnappers who take young women," Kamen tells. "The girls would then be auctioned off in these gorgeous mansions just outside of Paris."

Together, Besson and Kamen churned this idea into the creamy substance that became the bread and butter of the film, a gripping tale that on the surface sounds like something Steven Seagal could have pitter-pattered his way through like one of his infamous musical concerts, but at the end of the day it was Neeson's symphonic performance that sold the marvelous set pieces, the martial arts, and what Kamen gleefully calls, "Those crazy-crazy stunts. And what helps to cause-and-affect the reality of it all is the extremely limited use of computer-generated effects.

"It's the same mix we used in TRANSPORTER and KISS OF THE DRAGON."

Their protagonist's history as a former government operative appealed to Kamen, who had read about the startling exploits of several real-life operatives when he was doing graduate study work in Afghanistan. "I learned about guys doing covert operations," he admits. "I mean, real cuckoo stuff in that part of the world. I was particularly impressed with their self-reliance and skills. They are not the kind of guys who call the police when they're in a jam. They look at problems as things to be solved, as opposed to getting someone else to solve them for them. The thing is, they do not, repeat, do not adhere to the conventions of society."

It is evident from the film that Besson and Kamen took full advantage of the virtue of reality and that Bryan Mills was derived from truth, not make believe. For instance, no matter how many chips had fallen or how often the cookie had crumbled, Mills would not call for help, not even from his inner circle of fellow covert ops connections and pals. Instead, his character makes us believe the words quoted at the beginning of this article (the key line in the film that resonates with the sort of ambitious defiance we all at some time in our life would love to sanely do) as he relies on his own skills to hunt down and stop these sex traffickers.

When I first interviewed director Morel a few years ago in Los Angeles I asked him what he had picked up working as a cameraman on the aforementioned Hong Kong-style action films. He told me in his French-English accent, "I don't know if it was conscious but they (Yuen Woo-ping and Yuen Kwei) both had differing styles of shooting action and I learned their ways of changing angle and camera positions, and deepening it if it was Jet or his double on KISS OF THE DRAGON."

All this experience, as well as the experience gained from directing DISTRICT B-13, insured that working on a larger project with an even bigger A-list cast was not in the least bit intimidating for Morel. According to Kamen, Morel's on-set demeanor impressed him. He even likened it to that of his lead character, Bryan Mills. "Pierre is really calm and cool. He comes in, knows what the job is, and knows what he has to do to make it happen."

Morel admits that along with his calm comes a responsibility to keep the energy high on the set, saying, "Even though a lot hinges on the editing process, which is of course true for any film but when it comes to fights and action it is important that we have to all see the action's rhythm, and that it must be there when you are shooting. If it is not, there is no second chance. So I always ask the actors to keep up a high tempo and to be as realistic as possible. And personally, I am really charged up in the way I shoot, so I think a lot of the movie's energy comes from that. If you take your time over things, when you start to edit, you have to trim it back down and so you lose the rhythm."

Just as in the BOURNE films, tight camera angles seem to be the popular route for shooting fights, as it has been destructively evident in most Western films that feature a hero with deadly accurate pugilistic skills. For the most part it can be dizzying, yet when you have an aged fighter, where it is not about showing the audience how fancy he is or if he has a magical quality about his martial arts skills, but it is about the direct, one-stop bus ride to hell of the victim, then tighter angles accentuate the bludgeoning finality of Mills' skills.

Neeson's comments about Morel reflect an almost patriarchal air. "I was impressed with Pierre. He has had movies in his blood for a long time and is hugely experienced, especially as a director of photography. I particularly liked the originality of DISTRICT B13, which showed me that he had a director's eye and an incredible sense of rhythm and energy, which was vital on the set of TAKEN. I also happened to really like that fact that Pierre operated the camera himself.

"As alluded to earlier on, I thoroughly enjoyed bringing life to Mills' physicality, which required me to keep pretty fit and to undergo some pretty intense levels of training. Action scenes are particularly tricky. You have to pay close attention to how you move, your body position, and never take your eyes off your scene partner. It requires a lot of energy, besides the safety issues. Each time, it is a real challenge and each time the camera rolls, there is this little boy in you that just comes out with all the hand-to-hand combat scenes. With good stuntmen the fights become a dance that you perform with great pleasure."

Yet the pleasure really belonged to Morel. "For maximum impact of these combat set pieces we did a huge amount of rehearsal for Liam. You see, I really wanted, just like in my other action films, I wanted Liam to do as much as he possibly could without resorting to stunt doubles, because the audience appreciates that more.

"As Liam joked, of course he does not jump off the bridge or throw himself in front of cars. But he for certain did all of the fight scenes after we spent many hours rehearsing each routine. It was particularly demanding for him because I didn't want to speed up the action too much in the camera. Liam really did learn to fight strong and I think we were able to satisfactorily convey to the audience Mills' requisite physical skills and impressive martial abilities. I would close that overall it was not only physically, but it was also emotionally overwhelming but well worth the effort, and I applaud Liam's commitment to do all his own fights and work as hard as he did.

"But of course, although we started shooting in Los Angeles, most of the film was shot in Paris?much of it at night?and almost all of it involving action and stunts. As I understand it, Neeson was rather happy that the French crew had a greater presence of women because it brings a different energy to the set, plus of course there is the pleasure of the Parisian quality of life that was good for recovery from all those exhausting nights of fighting and filming."

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Written by Dr. Craig Reid for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM

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