Just got back from Taken--and I thought the movie was pretty good. It was sort of a "Bourne-light" type action/suspense movie with Liam Neeson (who is always awesome--thoughts go out to him and his family for his loss) being bad-assed. The movie was always moving forward, and although does get a little silly, was totally worth my $7.
What I did find interesting was what it sort of had to say about sex/virginity. Now TOTAL spoilers here (sorry, have no idea how to black crap out): Liam's daughter goes to France with her girlfriend, Amanda, and both of them get kidnapped by Albanian's involved in the sex trade. Well, stuff goes down and Liam, ex-CIA, goes on a rampage to find his daughter. Well, towards the end of the movie, he manages to find the daughter's friend first--but she's found tied to a bed, and most likely overdosed from drugs the Albanian's forced on her. Interestingly, Amanda, implies early on in the movie that she isn't a virgin, while the daughter is. The fact that the daughter is a virgin, managed to prolong the daughter's life because she is "more valuable" on the sex market and was sold to a dude running an auction in teenage girls--thus keeping her alive/safe long enough for Liam to find her. The daughter eventually is saved by our friend Liam and it ends well--except for Amanda who wasn't as "pure" or as "valuable" and died, tied to a bed, OD'd on drugs.
I have no idea if the filmmakers even had this quasi "don't have sex" message in the movie, but I thought is was a interesting "hidden?" message on not having sex. Think about it, the slutty girl is the person who makes contact with the kidnappers, and is the one who dies. While the virgin is saved and lives. Perhaps I'm the only person to have even thought of this connection and am crazy, but that was the first thing I though of when I came out of the movie. Reminds me of an anthropology class I had back in college about urban legends--they were stories that had hidden "don't do it meanings". For example--the babysitter gets a call from some creepy dude, and after a few calls she decides to trace the call and the call was IN THE HOUSE!!!: lesson-girls should not be in a house alone. Or the story about 2 young people making out in the car and hearing scratches at the door, and when they got home, A HOOK WAS ON THE DOOR!!!: lesson--don't make out have sex. Perhaps this is a movie with the hidden message about not having sex? Just throwing it out there.
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