Taken 2 (2012) Review

"I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want. If you are looking for a critique, I can tell you, I don't have one. But what I do have are a very particular set of verbal skills; skills I have acquired over a long period of deliberation. Skills that make me a nightmare for  readers like you. If you read my review now, that'll be the end of it. I will not confuse you, I will not bore you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."  

With all parodying of Liam Neeson's famous quotes aside, Taken 2 is a thoroughly entertaining, action-packed ride that delivers most of the expectations one would expect from a sequel to the first Taken. However, discussing Taken 2 with your peers or colleagues will not require you to tread lightly if they haven't seen it yet. Some find it relaxing, perhaps even comforting, to rest their vigilant eye and accept the lack of challenge during a film. But while I thoroughly enjoyed the rollercoaster and its unstoppable velocity, I found myself on a straightforward, uncurled track that I couldn't help but see the entire span of. But with all that considered, who can resist Liam Neeson delivering some well-deserved ass-kicking?

Taken 2 nestles neatly and long-awaited into Liam Neeson's filmography like an l shaped Tetris piece, four years after its forerunner. An array of action films have recently starred, co-starred or simply involved the proclaimed badass, such as Unknown, The A-Team, The Grey and his (what I thought was an) unexpected appearance in The Dark Knight Rises.  The spirited 60-year old, who performs most of his own stunts, has once again blazed his own path and gone great lengths to not only rescue his ex-wife, but to protect himself and his daughter in the role of Bryan Mills, retired US spy. A conversation between more than two separate people and I often leads to a muddled and frustrating experience, and yet Bryan can organize his own escape through his daughter while strapped to a metal post facing his ex-wife who hangs upside down (of course, my coordination would probably be enhanced to an equal level if I were a retired US spy). Needless to say, he has returned in Taken 2 with the cool, composed yet charismatic character we loved in the first Taken film, as he fights the villains who seek to avenge their dead family members, killed by Neeson in the first Taken.

After Lenore's holiday plans are cancelled by her husband, she, Bryan and daughter Kim take a vacation to Istanbul that doubles as one of Bryan's finished work trips, but the protagonists are lured into a false sense of security and relaxation. Famke Janssen, recognisable as foxy Phoenix/Jean Grey from the X-men series returns to a role equally stubborn yet somewhat emotional as Bryan's ex wife Lenore. Scenes jump wildly back and forth between the picturesque Istanbul surrounding the Mills trio and debris-strewn alleyways and degenerated quarters in which the villains lurk; this expresses unquestionable clique connotations, which unsubtly screams 'Liam Neeson's family is good, those guys are bad'. But our intelligence is not incessantly insulted; there is an attempt to add a third-dimension to these otherwise depthless antagonists; the basis of their revenge revolves around the loss of sons and fathers that Bryan mowed down rescuing Kim (in the first Taken), depicted through a slightly superfluous funeral scene, mixed with artsy flashbacks in the first five to ten minutes of Taken 2. 

The speed at which the film picks up and engages you is irrefutably swift, which is a major plus, but it will continuously occur to you that sympathy for the villains is unattainable, because their late family members were employed in a service that decadently traded innocent teenage girls as sex slaves. So while the attempt to enhance the plot is present, it falls flat on its face, a fate that Neeson's enemies meet throughout the film, which perhaps is a sufficient substitute if you are a lover of easy-to-follow action thrillers. Having said that, there is depth to daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace, who after her traumatic kidnapping is eager to assist the Mills family's escape from the assailants. Although Neeson is unparalleled in this film, Grace makes a marvellous effort at playing the frightened yet quick-witted Kim who has enough guts to assist her dad at the expense of placing herself in great danger.

Whether you're a sufferer of epileptic fits or just generally hate rave parties, you can spend a little extra time buying popcorn or going to the bathroom while the opening credits roll. But if you love that adrenaline that pumps through you whilst strapping into a rollercoaster, scaling a 20 meter climbing wall or even from missing that step at the bottom of the staircase, don't miss a second of it, as you will be immensely pumped for the ride. And it'll grip you from start to finish, through each fist fight and car chase; it won't even offer a moment of rest for Bryan's moments of intense thought and life-dependent recollection that only Liam Neeson could portray so effectively.

There may be moments of disorientation during a few of the fist fights, primarily due to the very finicky, jumpy shots, which are either done so intentionally for said effect, or because of time/regulation restrictions and thus ended up like so unavoidably (directors aimed for a 12A rating, and the original run could only be given 15 age rating by the BBFC without cuts to "violence and threat"[1], thusly, many scenes were chopped). It is an admirable fact that Liam Neeson during the filming of said fight scenes refrained from tagging in his stunt double, which combined with his amiable personality only enhances the "super-dad" character he inhabits in the Taken films. 

However, this particular volume of super-dad is somewhat deteriorated and watered down by comparison to the first Taken, immediately evident by comparing the age ratings. Taken: a well-needed 18, while Taken 2 holds a precarious 12A (anticipating an Uncut DVD/BluRay release). Investment in another shocking, gritty plot-line  would have perhaps been a more prudent option for Taken 2 that I can't help but feel we were all anticipating. Instead of remaining dedicated to the Taken fan base and aware of their preferences, it feels like a sell-out to attract a younger, wider audience to wet their beaks; although it is still a exceptionally worthy sequel to Taken, there is an awareness that it could have accomplished so much more.

With a review that I trust hasn't dissected the film too meticulously, I hope that your curiosity has been piqued and your inner love for action-thriller stirred; hopefully driven by an overwhelming eagerness after reading this, you will be taken 2 the cinema to watch it. Although it has its flaws and setbacks from the first Taken, it is a thrilling ride that is worth the £4.50 admission fee (unless you're an adult, you gotta pay full price, sucka).

Liz Burton (writer), Gareth Hughes (passive editor) 

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[1] http://www.musicrooms.net/v2/movies/mnews/2-re-edited-uk-rating-2/1518/ by Anthony Lund

The Woman in Black (2012) Review

In an incredibly traditional thriller/horror style, The Woman in Black epitomises everything we find horrifying about haunted houses and superstitions – to truly terrify someone, it is unnecessary to drown the screen in blood and gore, but it is more effective to establish an eerie atmosphere which sends chills down the viewer’s spine with each vibrating footstep. It is clear that together with Daniel Radcliffe, director James Watkins has made his mark, challenging the contemporary ways of creating horror; he has set standards that 2012 and years to come may struggle to top, and has completely revived the dead, traditional genre of Horror.

It is sad that Daniel Radcliffe’s acting improvement from the Harry Potter series is almost nonexistent, but his ability to shift his persona after engaging in such a steady roll is admirable. His role as a widowed lawyer with a son leads him into a muddy mess, as his investigation in a woman’s death traps him in an unwanted horror that his curiosity cannot cease chasing, despite ample warning from the village. Thankfully, his lack of ability to portray his emotions is not entirely counterproductive; his character’s ignorance is mandatory when setting the atmosphere. The worry in the villager’s voices and faces are enough to create awareness of the supernatural, which leads to questioning the curious behaviour of the villagers and their children’s untimely, unexplainable deaths - the premise of this horror.

The essence of horror is not to completely confuse the viewer, but instead to lead them astray and leave their mind feeling vulnerable and frightened. This is effortlessly accomplished in The Woman in Black; the simplicity of the story and swiftness of plot progression is perfectly proportionate. It feels traditional, eerie almost, like the feeling when watching The Others for the very first time – we feel frightened, but don’t know why just yet. It is tailored perfectly to tantalize us, to tempt our curiosity; we continue to wait for the woman in black to appear even though we know a scream is just around the corner.

Classical Horror imagery is incorporated into almost every scene – the creepy musical toys, mahogany rocking chairs, the dim, candle-lit hallways in an old, Victorian mansion. Even the foggy marshes that is considered one of the most cliché conventions of horror feels as fresh as if Watkins was the very first to use it. The pace of the film begins relatively slowly, but does so in order to place us in the village as if we were stood right beside Radcliffe, and to see for ourselves the woman in black.

Whatever your preference of film genre may be, The Woman in Black is an artfully brilliant production that fascinates the mind, reviving all the dead conventions of Horror that we all once loved, but unwittingly abandoned in favour of gore and blood. Your knees will be knocking, your stomachs will be twisting, and unquestionably you will be trembling at the sound of a pin drop, observing fearfully for the silhouette of a woman.

Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2, 2005) Review

(by Gareth Hughes, edited by Liz Burton)

When this game was announced all the way back in early 2005, I remember getting hyped. Not because it had guns or the choice to be an evil bastard over a good guy....it was because it had Shadow, one of the very few Sonic characters I actually liked. But after playing this game, did it destroy my respect I had for Shadow the Hedgehog? Let’s have a look shall we?

Story:

Unfortunately this game's 'story' was horrible and very forgettable. As mentioned before, Shadow is one of the few characters I actually liked, so when I heard this game would look more into his back story, I couldn’t wait to play it!  The game starts with Shadow moping about his past and who he is until Armageddon happens! OH NO! Actually, I wish that’d happened but this Armageddon-looking thing turns out to be Black Doom (the antagonist) and his alien army who start to attack the city. Black Doom then approaches Shadow, reminding him of the 'promised time' and to bring him all the chaos emeralds. Upon hearing this, Shadow somehow works out that the chaos emeralds are the answer for finding out about his past. This is the only part of the story that makes sense; the game has TEN, yes, TEN endings. The cut scenes between stages don’t actually add anything to the story as you will always be taking different pathways for the different ending. Even the 'true' ending never really explains who Shadow is, so you just wasted hours of your free time to find out NOTHING about Shadow at all. Oh, the other Sonic characters make cameos and add nothing to the overall story.

 Story – 1/5

 (I actually found this part difficult to write about)

Gameplay:

After the semi-decent (in my opinion) Sonic Heroes game, I was expecting Shadow the Hedgehog to control like that, except with gun play added in. It did, just more horribly and with unnecessary gun play. You’re going to use your homing attack more than guns, mainly because with your homing attack you know you’re going to hit your target 95% of the time. When guns do hit, however, you deal more damage than your normal homing attack. Running around is very clunky; turning a corner can result in instant death or running into a nearby enemy and the loss of ten rings. Running too fast can sometimes result in the map disappearing and you falling to your death, which happened too many times to me. 

Another thing worth noting is the chaos gauges. If you’re a good boy and do deeds of good (e.g. heal G.U.N soldiers and kill aliens) the blue gauge fills up and you can use chaos control. It blasts you through the stage at top speed, which is useless for 90% of missions except to get to the goal missions and sometimes boss missions where it freezes time instead. (To summarize boss missions - all of them are easy with the exception of Diablo which takes far too long to beat). Being a bastard (e.g. killing gun soldiers) will fill up your red chaos gauge and when full you can use chaos blast which is actually useful as it kills most foes on screen; it also deals a decent amount to bosses too. The whole 'pick your path’ thing is also frustrating, as you keep playing boring and repetitive missions from each side (good and evil). Most of the time, neutral ends up being the most enjoyable mission to play (get to the goal). An example of the missions would be 'find and heal all the G.U.N members'; when you think you got all of them you end up spending at least 20 minutes finding the last one. You can also choose to be on Black Doom’s side for this mission which makes no sense as it would cause a time paradox in Shadows past. 

Gameplay- 2/5

Neutral stages are the only enjoyable stages.

Music:

Most of the time, even in bad Sonic games, the soundtrack turns out to be the only good thing about the game. The same could be said about this, but not all of the music is great. A lot of it is forgettable and the only decent music pieces in this game I really enjoyed was 'I am...all of me' performed by Crush 40 and the beautiful 'Lost Impact' stage music. The rest of the music is hit and miss but it really depends on the person listening to it.

Music – 3/5

Graphics:

Even by PS2 standards this game could have done a hell of a lot better. One or two stages are nice and colourful but too many stages are bland and boring. Room designs can confuse the player as a lot of them look the same, which does not help if you’re doing missions such as 'find and heal G.U.N members'. Explosions, fire, lasers and all other SFX in the game don’t look very impressive at all. The game can also suffer horrible frame rate issues causing the game to look like a power point slide show. CGI cut scenes are impressive but does not make up for everything else already mentioned in this review.

Graphics – 2/5

Conclusion:

Shadow the Hedgehog was hyped up way too much by the media and fans. In the end we ended up with another broken and unplayable game which did not live up to any of the promises made. Even if you’re a hardcore Sonic fan like me, this is still a game to avoid.

Overall Score 2/5

Vanishing on 7th Street - Review

“…It’s almost painstakingly obvious that some form of ‘inspiration’ was either drawn or copied from other sources and crudely mashed together to form what can only be described as a Resident Evil: Extinction and Pitch Black mashup that goes absolutely nowhere…”

It's evident that a horror film has failed its objective if you leave the viewing without shutting all the curtains once darkness falls or feeling terrified of your own shadow. In the case of Vanishing on 7^th Street, this is very literally the case. The ideas behind it had tremendous potential, but were stifled by the poor direction, nonsensical and contradictory plot, and the horrific acting of our good friend Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), whose character is Luke (irony!), a surviving news reporter.

The fear of darkness – this is the basis of Vanishing on 7^th Street – strange occurrences begin to ensue in the city of Detroit, Michigan, as screams through a blackout is the last sound before a stream of bodiless clothes hits the floor. Some strange supernatural darkness and shadows, characterised by silly, generic sound effects of screeching spirits, is taking the bodies of people. The ones lucky enough to stand in natural sources of light survive. These survivors are our protagonists and the focus of the film, as they battle to stay within light, as night becomes longer and longer each day. The electricity of the entire town has gone after an electromagnetic pulse surges through the city, presumably caused by this supernatural darkness. Sounds interesting, right? As I said, it had real potential, but major flaws restricted this film from ever reaching it. 

This plot is shoddily conveyed with its subtitle ‘stay in the light’, which without explanation seems to contradict itself within the film numerous times – the camera work and, I say loosely, ‘special effects’, suggest so many times that it is all over, as the characters stumble over and somehow carelessly switch off their flashlights while falling, every single time. The darkness closes in, and as the scene changes, a bird’s eye view shows the shadows closing in. While one of the other characters desperately toss them a light or they scramble for their own (in what can only be described as a shoddy attempt to create suspense), the time off-screen suggests that the darkness would have taken them. This was not a one-off occurrence, and bothered me more than the moments of sudden shrieking or enclosing darkness ever did. May I also mention that this film was on a $10 million budget, and there is no excuse for missing such crucial factors? Half that budget most likely went on getting Anakin on board. Guess he really likes… the dark side! (Oh that was super funny!)

It’s almost painstakingly obvious that some form of ‘inspiration’ was either drawn or copied from other sources and crudely mashed together to form what can only be described as a Resident Evil: Extinction and Pitch Black mashup that goes absolutely nowhere. This portrayal of their desperation to flee the city circulates around Luke, the main protagonist played by Hayden Christensen, as he discovers (in a very unclear flashback) that Chicago may have other ‘survivors’…sounds like another apocalypse-based film we know…

The explanation for the strange occurrences never comes, and that’s okay, assuming you’re willing to accept that it’s a supernatural occurrence (therein lies the potential). But what is so frustrating is how an hour passess and all we see is Hayden Christensen perform his trademark whining and yelling that he’s so well known for in Star Wars, which leaves us with no strong, leading man to root for. The supporting cast plays a mother who has lost her baby to the darkness, a boy who has lost his mother and a man with concussion, slowly dying; they are all relatively talented actors and express their emotions believably, but they are not our protagonists. Instead, they are led by this bafoon who threatens to leave them all behind. This compares to our beloved Riddick from Pitch Black, who not only threatens, but tries to leave the weak behind. But in his case, however, he is supposed to be a douche-bag, who redeems himself with intelligence and his ‘badass’ qualities. Our protagonist Luke has no likeable assets that balance him out to be a three-dimensional protagonist and is instead a whiny, unlikeable brat. 

The ending is either incredibly contradictory to physics, or attempted to pursue the supernatural theme, but failed on epic proportions (without spoiling too much in case you are somewhat curious and want to watch this film). The boy whose mother has been lost enters a church, after abandoning Luke in search of her. With no hope left, he sits amongst candles as they extinguish one by one, and insists that ‘he exists’ to repel the darkness from taking him. The scene changes; morning has come, and he is still alive. It suggests the candle burnt the entire night, which perhaps is referencing the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, which celebrates the miracle of candles burning for seven nights rather than one. If this is in fact the case, why is it set in a Catholic church with statues of the Crucifix of Jesus and the Virgin Mary? 

Perhaps it was attempting to create a metaphor for the fear of darkness, however it’s entirely implausible that such a massive amount of people would vanish, as surely some measure of bravery would rest in such a large population – it seems far more based around the luck of those who managed to have light when the surge occurred, and is maybe instead suggesting that the candle burning for the whole night was lucky. This is highly unlikely, as the entrance to the church (without spoiling too much) has a huge opening, and a draft of wind would undoubtedly enter and blow the candle out. Hence the contradiction to the laws of physics. 

There is a vast range of other concerning elements that irk me, but having addressed the main issues this leads to the end of the review. I sincerely hope that Vanishing on 7^th Street vanishes from our local film stores and supermarkets before anyone else is engulfed by the crude darkness that is this film's shittiness. Go and have a watch if you are truly curious; I personally am not one for horror films, but on the occasion when I do watch them, I am very rarely scared and so perhaps it’s my desensitised brain that is so critical of this film; you may like it, or you may not. You've been warned.

Liz Burton (writer), Gareth Hughes (passive editor)

Introduction

Reading this page, you may have a general idea what it's about, but if not then let me elaborate! 

Chukapi's Scribblings of a Geek aims to share opinions and views on various forms of entertainment, whether it be games, films or a book I happened to briskly read the blurb of and thought to myself 'this sounds like crap' or 'this sounds fairly interesting'.

In sharing these opinions, Chukapi hopes to either inspire you to share your own opinions, or to simply inform you - perhaps in light of these reviews you will find yourself purchasing said reviewed game, or watching the reviewed film with confidence after reading a complimentary review. On the other hand, this blog may save you from a terrible encounter and forewarn you of the bad apples that you may unknowingly pick out from the barrel of the entertainment archive! 

The Scribblings hopes to more than anything to tickle your fancy and hopefully entertain you in the process!