Taken (2009)

Directed by Pierre Morel

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Cast Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Leland Orser, Xander Berkeley, Katie Cassidy

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Reviewed by Sari

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What if you are a retired CIA spy, a loving father and ready to help your child whenever possible? What if your child happens to be an adventurous 17-year old girl, ready to explore the world, all by herself? Well, it means that perhaps your help is needed sooner or later, especially Liam Neeson being in the leading role in this fast paced movie.

In Taken Bryan (Liam Neeson) is this ex-spy, living modest life close to his 17-year old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who herself lives with her mom Lenore (Famke Janssen) and stepdad Stuart (Xander Berkeley), getting everything she wants and having a very luxurious lifestyle. Bryan doesn't necesserily agree on her daughter's lavish lifestyle and all the freedom her daughter has, but tries to adjust as well as he can. As for him the most important thing is just to be close to his daughter, after all those years serving the country and not being able to spend a lot of time with his family.

Suddenly Kim decides to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) and Bryan gets very frustrated and even a little paranoid about this idea. He is afraid that she ends up getting in trouble travelling with no adult supervision, but reluctantly sings the papers that free her to go abroad, being under aged. He gives Kim a cell phone and asks her to keep in contact with him all the times, fearing for her safety. Girls have just arrived to Paris and Bryan is on the cell phone with Kim when the inevitable happens. Both girls are being kidnapped by Albanian human smugglers and Bryan is witnessing all this by the phone.

He contacts his friend Sam (Leland Orser) and finds out about the Albanian connection and is immediately on a a plane, on his way to Paris. This leads to a hunt where desperate father is after the criminals trying to figure out their next steps to find her daughter and he doesn't hesitate to use all his power and all the possible ways to rescue Kim.

This movie has all the parameters needed to work like a good action movie should. There is a lot of exciting moments, some pretty intense chasing scenes and the person who makes this film even more interesting is of course Liam Neeson and his character Bryan. Neeson is just wonderful to watch on screen. There is a man who is always so humble, yet extremely talented and can play any role, any time, making it his own thing.

The storyline is not perhaps the strongest possible and at some point it gets pretty obvious what is going to happen next and how the story is going to end. But Neeson keeps the audience in excitement and it is quite obvious to see, that the main responsibility for this movie to succeed lays on Neeson's hands.

Reminds me of those good, old 90s action films with a lot of chasing, excitement and a strong, charismatic person in a leading role. Sometimes that is all it takes to have a good movie experience. So enjoy! I sure did!

Angels and Demons (2009)

Directed by Ron Howard

Written by David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman, based on Dan Brown's novel

Cast Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Armin Mueller-Stahl

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808151/

Reviewed by Päivi

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Like so many others, I started my friendship with the author Dan Brown with his novel Da Vinci Code. Few years ago when I was traveling in New Zealand and had already almost two months behind me, I needed something to read and rest my head. I found Angels and Demons from a bookstore and after that the next few days I spent sightseeing the amazing New Zealand by day and adventuring in Vatican by night. After that experience I thought, wow, this would be great to see as a movie!

Now my wish has come true - Angels and Demons is released as a movie version. Tom Hanks continues as the professor Robert Langdon specialised in symbolism as he did in the movie version of Da Vinci Code. (I have always had problems with Hanks as Langdon because he is not at all that convincing, handsome professor I pictured him in my mind...) Langdon is invited to Vatican City after the Pope has died and four cardinals - preferiti, the most popular choices to become a new Pope - have been kidnapped by an ancient secret society called Illuminati. A cryptic message is left behind and the Vatican wants the world famous symbolist to help them in saving the lives of the cardinals.

At the same time a container of antimatter is stolen from the LHC lab (Large Hadron Collider) in CERN Switzerland. A physicist studying the antimatter, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), has traveled to Vatican as well because not only have the cardinals been kidnapped, also the whole Vatican is in danger of exploding because the antimatter may work as a bomb.

While the Pope's camerlengo (Ewan McGregor) heads the papal office and leads the cardinals into a conclave to try to elect a new pope. Langdon and Vetra run around the Vatican and Rome in search of the ancient Path of Illumination, the kidnapped cardinals and the antimatter container.


Angels and Demons the movie is filled with action. Everything happens within five hour timeframe and as the pretty complicated story is squeezed into two and a half hours, the action is at times breathtaking. The screenplay is written well, it sticks together and does not fall apart despite the various possibilities. The focus of the story is mainly in the riddle of the Path of Illumination, the four elements of science and how they are combined with the four missing cardinals and pretty much everything else from the book is left out.

For someone not familiar with the novel, this is one hell of an action ride with interesting twists and turns and a very different angle for a mystery thriller. It is fascinating to see how the Vatican works and see a glimpse of the secrets vaults of Vatican (which are of course not real because director Ron Howard was not allowed to film in Vatican but he had to recreate Vatican elsewhere). But for those who know the story. the thrill gets lost at times, and it is often difficult to really stay interested in what happens to who.

Overall, Angels and Demons is pretty loyal to the original story, is well acted, has good action sequences, interesting twists, introduces us to the art and history of Vatican and Rome, but is a bit soulless. It runs it's course in a decent way, but instead of being either black or white, it leaves a somewhat grey feeling.

Duplicity (2009)

Directed by Tony Gilroy

Written by Tony Gilroy

Cast Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135487/

Reviewed by Päivi

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Tony Gilroy, the man behind many engaging cinematic stories such as Michael Clayton, Jason Bourne -series, The Devil's Advocate, an Oscar-nominated director of Michael Clayton and also a man behind another new thriller State of Play (reviewed in here) has written and directed Duplicity, a story of two spies who end up falling in love.

Clive Owen is Ray Koval, a MI-6 agent on a mission in Dubai when he meets Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), a CIA agent. There's something about Claire, thinks Ray, and ends up in bed with the lady... only to find himself next morning, drugged, and all his secret papers stolen by the other agent.

Time passes, the agents' paths meet again and it seems they can't stay away from each other. Because they know so many of the agent tricks, they start planning together a gig that would lead them to big money. But they have a problem: how to be able to trust each other? They are a perfect match in a way that they understand each other, but they are both so deep in their jobs that betrayal and mistrust is always in their minds.


Their plan involves two soap industry bosses, played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti (check especially the opening of the movie, when the two middle aged bosses have a fight in slow motion - just hilarious). A lot of spying, counter spying and a very very complicated plot follows, and I'm not going to explain that to you because it would spoil the surprises, and eventually everything pretty much turns upside down and everyone is confused on who betrayed who.

The complex story is very well written and the actors play their parts nicely. Especially Giamatti and Wilkinson are awesome as those soap moguls who try everything to find the magic product and especially launch it first (no matter who originally invented it). It is interesting to see all the complexities in industry secrets, how those big companies are well organised like countries who hold national secrets and they even have their own agents in house. In case of a big invention that might bring the company billions of dollars, this is understandable.

Roberts and Owen are cute as professional spies who are very efficient and self confident in what they do, but who are so vulnerable and insecure when it comes to questions about love. Owen is showing his usual charm and he fits into the role beautifully. Roberts is a bit missing her charisma as an ice-cold spy, and it is easy to understand why Ray questions her love.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, and still the ending brought a little surprise with it, which is pretty rare nowadays. And I totally loved the end scene with the champagne and all. Duplicity is recommended to all who enjoy crime/thriller stories with some comedy inside.

State of Play (2009)

State of Play is a movie based on a British television drama serial, broadcasted on BBC One in 2003. It captures a balanced combination of crime, drama and thriller ingredients. The story begins with an intense chase, where a young criminal runs for his life late in the evening, eventually finding a hiding place from a dark alley, but unfortunately meets his final destiny and gets shot by a mysterious briefcase man, along with a witness, who just happened to be at a wrong place at a wrong time.

The next day an investigative newspaper reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) from Washington Globe comes to the crime scene and is curious to know what has happened. He is a well-known reporter among all the cops and detectives and is always there where something's going on.

Later that morning there is a news flash on television about yet another death, this time the victim is a young woman called Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer), who also happens to be Congressman Stephen Collins' (Ben Affleck) assistant and even more, as speculated, his secret lover. Cal happens to see the news and seems to be in awe with all this. And there is also a good reason for his reaction. Stephen Collins happens to be his former college roommate and a close friend of his, but Cal didn't have any idea of his secret affair with this young woman. He now finds himself in a challenging position trying to solve the case and on the other hand trying to help his friend.

He starts to investigate these two crimes with a young reporter, Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), even though at first he is not that interested to work with a young college grad who is still a bit green and concentrates mainly on her political blog in the newspaper. They end up doing the story together after all and as they get deeper to the story, they find out that there is much more going on than just these random deaths. All the incidents are linked together and they soon discover that Congressman Collins is also much deeper into all this than they first thought.

State of Play is well implemented movie, the storyline is strong and keeps you alert till the very end. The cast is phenomenal, Russell Crowe once again showing the audience what an incredibly talented actor he is. Watching his acting as Cal, this old-style reporter was such a strong performance and he was so comfortable with this character it felt like he truly has been a reporter in his former life. His brown corduroy jacket, the long, curly hair and rough, unshaved beard were like the finishing touches to his spectacular role.

Ben Affleck as the congressman Collins was also solid and believable, as well as Rachel McAdams in the role of Della Frye. McAdams added some fresh female energy to this film, along with Helen Mirren in a role of Editor-in-Chief Cameron Lynne. Together these two ladies made a nice balance with the strong smell of testosterone in this reporter-detective story.

Probably one of the strongest movies of its kind this year making you want to see more films like this. Enjoyable movie, with not so much action or violence, but with more investigative and crime-solving perspective.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald

Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy & Billy Ray (screenplay), Paul Abbott (television series)

Cast Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Maria Thayer

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473705/