This is a classic — one of very few from the 90s with this genre and level of execution, if not the only one of that combination. Whether it skyrocketed the careers of Banderas, Buscemi, Hayek and Trejo or just highlighted them doesn’t really matter — what matters is they all shined individually and came together to make this a smooth movie with good acting, good action and good cinematography.
For such a simple and (in a way) boring style of opening, it did fantastically to sustain attention, buy you into the characters and lure you into the simple yet intriguing plot.
While there are still interesting scenes as the movie progresses, the density of intrigue dwindles with the odd bit of talkative drama. For this reason, instead of the potentially higher rating that this movie was probably capable of after the first half hour, it seems like it deserves a rating of Decent after the first hour is through.
Joaquim De Almeida does well as the chief baddie. Danny Trejo does well as the main hired gun. Salma Hayek does well as the lead female. Steve Buscemi does great as the lead character’s sidekick although he dies quite early on. And of course Antonio Banderas does great as the main star of the movie.
It seemed like it was losing steam with about half an hour to go, but a couple of interesting plot twists kept us on our toes and made it continually quite watchable.
Considering the balance of its dated simplicity vs its intrinsic strengths, I rate this movie Pretty Good – just 2 or 3 levels shy of the best action hero movies of all time.
Sequel
If you enjoyed this movie, you may wish to check out its sequel — Once Upon A Time in Mexico (2003) — although that sequel is countless levels weaker than the original — it’s Barely Watchable for me — so you might be disappointed.
This is low quality action movie entertainment, which does little but dirty Dave Bautista‘s name, as should probably be expected from ‘Signature’. It’s about equal to a typical made-for-Netflix action-drama series.
Barely Watchable seems like a fitting rating for this movie early on, when it’s mostly tolerable but frequently a struggle to justify the time wasted, even for an avid action movie connoisseur and a Dave Bautista fan.
The plot spices up a bit 25 minutes in, as the kids form their own tactical team. It doesn’t make a great movie by any means, but the injection of a little plot serves to mask the awful teenage drama dialogue and upgrades it to a Watchable movie — a little bit easier than Barely, but only just.
Aside from Dave Bautista, the most memorable other cast member is probably the girl (played by Inde Navarrette) whom Bautista’s son (played by Jack Champion) falls for, who turns out to be (spoiler alert) the daughter of the cartel bosses (the mother played by Kate del Castillo).
This movie is a classic example of excitement mixed with boredom. On the one hand it’s got some very cool action and backstory, while on the other hand it’s got a very one-dimensional plot – they don’t even leave the one parking lot for the vast majority of the movie. Of course it’s not all shot in one take and one scene, but it’s pretty much one stageset for the whole movie with the exception of the very beginning and the very end. Naturally, this makes it a bit boring throughout, even if it’s also quite exciting thanks to a good genre, a good lead actress (the beautiful Olga Kurylenko from Hitman, although she’s now pushing 40), plus a reasonable supporting cast and respectable screenplay & cinematography. But whatever happened to the plot! For this reason, even while it’s got potential to be rated a lot higher with a bit more scene diversity, it’s ultimately been dragged down to a Below Average in my view. I mean it’s not ‘bad’ bad, but it’s not ‘very good’ either. There’s a few gory scenes in the back half too – beyond unnecessary for the smooth action hero fan, but Hollywood can’t help itself with stuff like that can it.
The first few minutes are boring. The next few minutes are depressing – even hard to watch. By the 15th minute, we meet the family that includes the boy who will become the co-star of the show, but it’s still quite miserable and hard to watch thus far.
The interesting stuff begins around half an hour in, when the boy whose life he saved, who lost his mother in a firefight at the border, seems to have been pursued by the cartel members from the border, and Liam Neeson‘s character changes his mind and decides to rescue the boy even though it would be easy to dismiss the situation and say he’s probably safe in the hands of the border force.
It gets a bit more interesting near the end of the first hour, as the police pull him over on the highway and it turns out the copper was paid off by the cartel. But Neeson susses it and escapes, and now he knows how real the situation is, and decides to take the fight to them.
That’s pretty much the movie in a nutshell – there’s a few action scenes but aside from that it’s generally quite slow, boring and a bit depressing.
As such, I rate it So-So, and that’s probably being kind. A couple levels down from Bang Average. One level better than Watchable, although I could also justify rating it just Watchable. The rare good bits, combined with the slightly compelling story and the respectable acting & cinematography save it from the dustbin even though it’s got a terribly simple script and is quite boring and depressing for the most part, especially if you’ve seen it before and recall some of the storyline.
This movie starts out slow, cold and depressing, and never very much escapes from this vibe. It sees a beta male character played by Liam Neeson, called Nels Coxman, gradually turning into a semi alpha male character, not dissimilar from Liam Neeson’s action movie from the year prior (The Commuter, 2018).
Cold Pursuit sets a slow pace, but thanks to decent screenplay, it kind of manages to hold attention still. It’s not the most entertaining movie Liam Neeson’s been involved in – not even close – but it’s probably not his worst work either.
In the first 22 minutes, Nels’ son has died, ruled an overdose, and Nels is on the verge of suicide himself now, until he discoveres his son was really murdered, so he goes after and kills someone involved while attempting to track down the root of the drug empire that’s to blame.
The main antagonist, Trevor ‘Viking’ Calcote, played by Tom Bateman, looks like a son of Quentin Tarantino, and quite appropriately, he plays a vice-pushing ringleader who is also particularly well informed about certain other habits deceiving the masses.
Also with the suspected Tarantino link, it should come as no surprise that this movie shows a lot of blood & gore – depicting violence in some very slow, very ugly scenes – seriously polluting the minds of the audience.
By 40 minutes in, Neeson’s character Nels has killed multiple people in separate scenes by punching them to near death before shooting them to finish them off, then dumped their bodies at a deserted snowy waterfall.
It gets a little more lighthearted and yet intriguing towards the end of the first hour, when Nels hires a hitman to take out Viking – the cartel boss behind his son’s murder – then the hitman double crosses Nels, doing a deal with Viking, then the hitman gets hit, and Viking goes after who he thinks hired him.
Pace is still slow due to low-tempo screenplay and solumn sound effects etc, but there’s a bit less grit and a bit more intrigue now.
Watch out for explicit man-on-man kissing at the start of the second hour – it’s not for everyone!
This movie had a bit more solid action towards the end, but never very much escapes the slow, gritty, irreverent atmosphere that it established early on. Bateman’s acting is strong and Neeson’s is decent too, but given the constant cold moody genre, I can’t rate it any better than So-So.
If you think Taken 2 was being unorthodox by having Liam Neeson‘s hotshot character Bryan Mills among those kidnapped, you’ll probably think Taken 3’s a bit out there too, since it sees his wife killed in the first 20 minutes and Bryan becomes the prime suspect but doesn’t stick around to get arrested even in his own country, in his own house – instead he decides to go on the run and get to the bottom of things in his own way.
This movie benefits massively from the presence of Forest Whitaker who plays the lead investigator on the case of Bryan’s ex wife’s murder – you may recogise him as an FBI agent from Bloodsport several decades ago. He’s a pretty good actor, on a similar level to Neeson I’d say, even if nowhere near as rich or famous, he has just as much screen charisma.
Inline with what we’ve come to expect from the first two Taken movies, this one continues the theme of realistic insights into tactics that such a person as Neeson’s character Bryan would be likely to use, including some things more cliché and other things that we’d be less likely to consider. Such as inconspicuous code words over telephone calls (cliché but tactically powerful), and escaping from a foot chase by going through unexpected underground tunnel systems that have inconspicuous entrance masking objects (kind of like hiding in plain sight, thus still a bit cliché, while equally powerful). Also escaping from handcuffs using a concealed pick – something like what I thought we would see in the last movie to be honest, and then he pulled out a mini mobile phone instead! He also does a bit of waterboarding – a torture & interrogation technique made popular by American military in Gitmo etc.
As with the last movie, the hand-to-hand combat scenes here are very choppy between different camera angles – a classic method of masking an actor’s lack of real combative acumen, and in this case, his total lack of physical coordination altogether.
This movie also has a vibe of mystery that wasn’t present in the first two Taken movies, such that it’s not until half an hour before the end that we ever find out who killed Bryan’s ex wife – or so we think – and it’s not until the last quarter an hour that someone (his daughter) actually gets “Taken” this time round.
Even though this movie deviates from the standard Taken concept, and takes a while to warm up, and is a bit miserable early on; in the end I have to rate it higher than Taken 2, and roughly on a par with the original thanks to its strong ending. The highest point was near the end, when Bryan was speeding in a Porsche, chasing after the plane that his ex wife’s murderer turned daughter’s kidnapper was trying to escape in. But it wasn’t just an isolated high, it was part of a larger ending that’s generally quite strong thanks to the converging contributions of multiple decent actors and the richness & pace of the script – something gravely lacking earlier on.
I was disappointed (but not surprised) by the closing scene though. When, after learning that his daughter is pregnant, Bryan says something along the lines of “whatever you decide, I’ll support you” as if there’s a decision to be made (to kill or not to kill, is what I assume it means). But they cleverly brushed that one under the carpet quickly, by talking about the potential name of the baby, as if that’s what Bryan were referring to all along.
This movie takes half an hour to get warmed up, after a bit too long with the non-action backstory drama. But once it gets going about half an hour in, it turns roughly into what we know and expect from the first Taken movie. But even with all that backstory building, it’s really much ado about nothing early on, because this movie’s backstory is still quite reliant on knowing how the first movie went down.
Seeing Liam Neeson run around town, away from those who intend to kidnap him and his family members, really highlights the kind of fragile, awkward movement that only the trained eye could clock onto in the first movie. The fight scenes are also a bit weaker this time round, with a lot of camera angle flashing – a serious lack of rolling footage that lasts more than a fraction of a second – this is a classic budget coverup tactic for actors who can’t really fight, but the last movie didn’t have so much of this going on – not because Neeson could fight any better, but because it must have had a better screen combat team, including choreographers assisting him and stunt doubles standing in for him etc. I guess they’ve cut the budget in that department for Taken 2.
On the plus side, there’s realistic tactics displayed again by Neeson’s character Bryan Mills here, including things we didn’t see in the last movie. Such as memorising a journey taken when kidnapped, by counting seconds while listening out for sounds and driving style changes all along the way, even while blindfolded, in order to re-trace the same route later on; and using items concealed in clothing, to facilitate escape (in this case, a mini cellphone). Then measuring distance while on the phone by counting seconds between an explosion on each end.
On the plus side also, Maggie Grace‘s acting has improved slighty since the last movie. Not massively so, but it’s a little bit better than it was before. Just a little bit.
Around an hour in, things really warm up, as Bryan instructs his daughter Kim on how to help him and her mother to escape. There’s a good 10 minutes of fast action from here – mainly a high speed car chase where Kim is in the driving seat. This, combined with her helping him to escape earlier on, makes this movie very much about the daughter playing the action hero while the father himself is a somewhat immasculated man – a theme we saw from the very beginning while he’s meekly trying to win over his ex wife, who he treats like royalty, even though she’s been with another man for some time. All this girl power and immasculation stuff probably ticks a few boxes for the producers, but makes for a much weaker action movie – it’s much less enjoyable – it’s much weaker in its highs, and it’s much stronger in its lulls – it’s got less pleasantry, and more unpleasantry, which is no mean feat considering the nature of the last movie. It’s not until the last 20 minutes (15 if you take out the closing credits) when Bryan really does his thing and tries to rescue his ex wife.
All in all, it’s not massively different from the first Taken movie, and it has some slightly fresh ideas of its own, but it’s clearly a weaker movie over all, while still being mildly entertaining enough and on-genre enough to earn a Below Average rating I’d say. And that may even be a bit generous considering all the hard-to-watch monotonous and unpleasant chunks that I found myself fast-forwarding through in the knowledge that I was missing absolutely nothing from the goodness of the movie and even saving myself the pain of the screeching background noise that I can only assume is a desperate attempt to add flesh on the bones of the movie and build some kind of suspense & momentum when in fact it really serves only to irritate, not dissimilar to annoying noisy adverts jumping out and disturbing your mood while trying to enjoy a decent YouTube video for example (I’m sure that’s done as a psychological warfare tactic, and not really for the ad revenue).
Bryan’s ex wife in this movie and the last, called Lenore Mills, is played adequately by Famke Janssen who you may recognise as Jean Grey aka Phoenix from the X-Men movie series prior to Sophie Turner taking over that role for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
The main baddie in this movie – the father of the main baddie in the previous movie – is played by Rade Šerbedžija (from Tekken 2). He’s not a bad actor but he seems to have a habit of appearing in slightly flopped sequels with similar names. Watch out for him if you want to make a movie called anything like Token 2 or Toucan 2!
This movie begins with a very realistic view of some of the troubles in today’s world, as it builds up the backstory before getting stuck into the meat & potatoes of the plot. Liam Neeson‘s acting is pretty good here, but the woman playing his daughter has a serious lack of acting ability – her emotional scenes are cringeworthy in how they’re so skin-deep and bone dry, although to her credit she does get into the role properly once or twice, for the most important scenes, such as the moment of her kidnap. She’s also built so butch she couldn’t possibly be Neeson’s daughter – they don’t look alike and they don’t think alike, and this only magnifies the issue of poor acting, but fortunately she won’t be doing much in this movie beyond her role in the beggining and even less in the end, so this isn’t a major issue once it gets going.
The kidnap scene happens shortly before the end of the first hour, and aside from this being a rare moment of good acting from the daughter of Neeson’s character, it’s also the first time Neeson shows his talent as a “preventer” which lays the groundwork nicely for whats to come and makes the movie quite exciting going forwards, with about one hour remaining. This particular kidnap scene is well directed, well scripted, well planned and well supported with good cinematography and good acting – it only lasts a few minutes but it’s easily the most memorable and powerful moment of the movie, and as such, quite appropriately it makes clever use of the word Taken which is where this movie gets its name from – in fact a trilogy of movies (Taken in 2008; Taken 2 in 2012; Taken 3 in 2014).
Aside from strong combative tactics & techniques empty hands, blades, guns and makeshift weaponary too (massive credit to the fight choreographers there), some of the other niche problems & solutions demonstrated by Neeson in this movie are pretty realistic too, on topics such as rush-job crimescene analysis, suspect tracking, ad-hoc interrogation, room-clearing counter-measures and stunt driving, which all adds to the credible impression of his character and makes for a better movie in general. He’s basically an ex paramilitary operator with very tidy hands-on skills plus connections that enable him to get any kind of info he needs from government. He doesn’t move like an athlete, he’s even a bit physically feeble in his movement, which is a big red flag to the trained eye, considering his alleged top-level hands-on military background; but considering his age, his variety of skills, and his extremely useful connections, his obvious physical flaws do actually match a different kind of agent that makes his character credible again, ie someone privileged in an agency like the CIA where he’d have access to all the best training and connections without really needing to train so hard physically as someone coming through the military system would. Now if we go with this concept just to make the acting credible, the main thing that doesn’t add up now is how he’s so broke – he ought to be well set. Retiring completely from any kind of well-earning work just to be closer to his daughter who he’s still very distant with, doesn’t really add up, especially if we go with the privileged agent narrative. If he were ever operating on that level, he would have earnt plenty before he retired; else with all those connections on top of the kind of drive displayed in this movie, he should be easily capable finding work that closely suits his lifestyle preferences and still pays quite well – especially something senior in the security industry. Enough to buy a last-minute plane ticket at least. With all that specialist training and such a conservative approach to parenting, one would expect him to have saved up and cached away some resources for a rainy day, if only to help in case of emergency – exactly this very kind of emergency for example, which he was already predicting and trying to prevent before it happened. So some things just don’t add up here, but it’s not so bad that it significantly detracts from the power of the movie – it’s mainly just something that comes to mind when stopping to think critically about the credibility of the lead character’s story. On the surface, things generally seem quite realistic (except for the daughter’s awful acting early on).
At the half-way mark, when he gets close to the trail of his daughter and finds someone who she befriended and gave her jacket to, this movie looks potentially set for a rating of Above Average if it continues on its current trajectory which has had plenty of slow & dry patches but some impressive occasional highs too and seems to be still building momentum and just starting to get into the thick of the plot. Unfortunately the highs are a bit less impressive in the second half – the creativity doesn’t dry up entirely, and the action scenes are stll respectably made, but the momentum dwindles slightly and this becomes a Bang Average movie in the end.
The Shepherd is a movie of three parts, in terms of quality. Excusing the pointless, irrelevant & boring opening scene that drags on for 5 minutes, it soon gets off to a very interesting start after that, with a great bar scene reminiscent of the iconic scene outside the bar in Hard Target. Then it tails off into a still interesting but less brilliant movie, as Van Damme deals with criminals crossing the border in his usual kickass style, massively outperforming his comrades. Then the backend of the movie becomes a bit monotonous though, as Van Damme gets trapped in a Mexican prison then handed over to the cartel where he gets tortured a bit and eventually fights his way out, and that’s pretty much the end of the story although there’s half an hour to burn while he’s in the cartel’s hands so the ending is over extended and gets a bit boring for those who’ve seen this movie a few times before even if not in the last few years.
Scott Adkins plays the main muscle of the bad guys. He does a fair job as usual – nice moves but skin-deep emotion.
Natalie J Robb plays the lead female quite well, with vibes of Kate & Ziva from early seasons of NCIS. She plays Van Damme’s boss in the New Mexico border force that he’s assigned to.
Overall I rate it an OK movie, although it had so much more potential early on.
Action Hero Movies