I recently had the misfortune of going to the cinema to waste twenty bucks on Taken 2. Well, the going to the cinema part was actually quite nice. I was in good company and there was a very enjoyable dinner beforehand. So the night wasn’t a total loss. But you’d think, what better way to top off a nice outing than to go see a cheesy fun action movie. The first Taken was a vindictively fun little guilty treat, so the second one was sure to be at the very least fun. I was happy to ignore plot-holes and bad dialogue, I mean I’m going to see an action movie here, plot holes and bad dialogue are par for the course. Anyone who moans about those elements in an action movie, is the kind of douche who doesn’t get action movies (and movies in general) and probably uses the words “cliche” and “iconic” way too much if they happen to be a reviewer.

Well I showed up at the cinema, making sure to switch off my mobile phone and brain concurrently, so I may have an enjoyable watching experience and I was all set. With my three hundred dollar medium popcorn and drink combo sitting in my lap, I watched excitedly as Taken 2 began. It all began quite nicely, opening with the villains sulking about how Liam Neeson had killed their buddies in the previous film and how they were going to take revenge. Sweet, I love a good vengeance story. Liam Neeson’s character’s life had turned sickly sweet as he was introduced as this nice dad who was seemingly on the home stretch of winning his once estranged wife and daughter back. I did feel at times, his relationship with his daughter was a little bit too close, and felt like screaming “get a room!” at the screen. “Don’t worry, it’s just a movie,” I repeated to myself as I often do when father/daughter relationships seem just a little bit too incestuous in action movies.


But let me get to the point here, because I have already written two more paragraphs than I intended to write on this piece of crap. I know it seems out of character for this site to feature a review of a recent release and, like a bad method actor, this article so far is. The reason I am writing about Taken 2 is not to review it and discuss its merits as a movie, it is to discuss the dire state of the contemporary action blockbuster, focusing on one element in particular: Shaky Cam.

Who decided that all action scenes would look better if they shook the camera around, shot the entire thing in mid, screwed with the frame rate and edited them as though they were watching a guy from like 20 different angles in the space of .4 seconds? Taken 2 could have, at the very least, been enjoyable had they held the camera still long enough to actually show us the choreographed fight scenes and stunts taking placing. Instead I found myself watching wondering who Liam Neeson just kicked? I know there’s only him and one other guy in the room but I can’t tell which direction either of them are facing due to this confusing editing and the fact that apparently Jerry Lewis was the camera guy in all the action scenes, sliding around on a banana peel, juggling the camera and screaming, “Oh nice ladieeeee!” Do people think this actually looks good or gritty? I mean I guess they must, which is sad.

I remember when action movies were an amazing spectacle full of outrageous stunts, set pieces and choreography, that they held the camera wide and still enough for us to see what they had gone to all the effort to craft. I call this the pre-Private Ryan period. Read into that what you will. Now we just have a bunch of headache inducing camera wobbling and frame skipping – the cinematic equivalent of taking a dump on the lens and shooting everything in what I call Dump-o-Vision.

Enjoy a bit of pre-Dump-o-Vision fun from John Woo and think of the good times…