TAKEN CELEBRATES BUSH’S CIA
The recently released Taken, directed by Pierre Morel, involves an effort by former CIA agent Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson) to rescue his daughter Amanda (played by Katie Cassidy) from a kidnapping in Paris preparatory to confinement in a condition of white slavery. The film stresses Mills’s love for his daughter, frustrated by a divorce that restricts his ability to be with her. The inevitable rescue enables him to gain new respect. The circumstances of the rescue, however, involve Mills in littering the screen with dead bodies on an unimaginable scale and escaping accountability for his vigilantism. Rather than questioning the American public’s toleration for the Bush administration’s mantra, “the end justifies the means,” Taken will have the effect of justifying that departure from the rule of law. MH