Christian’s Grade: A-
Is it wrong to have a favorite movie about human trafficking?
A lot of people already do, and the name of that movie is…Taken (2008). Taken is remembered for two things; it stars Liam Neeson (everyone loves Liam Neeson) and for the great line, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you; I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
What I remember about Taken is that it had a great trailer. Based on that trailer, I expected the movie to take a hard look at the modern slave trade. I also remember being disappointed because it ended up being a very PG-13 look at the modern slave trade, and more importantly, this movie came out four years after David Mamet’s much better and far more underrated film Spartan (2004).
While sharing a very similar plot, Spartan is an alternative look at what Taken could’ve been if it were a political thriller instead of an action/drama. Val Kilmer stars as a special operative, well known within the military and government as being a guy who gets things done. So, when the daughter of a high-profile political figure goes missing, and they need someone to find her quickly and quietly, they call him in. Through his investigation, he discovers she’s been kidnapped and sold to a human trafficking ring. The time to recover her is short because once she’s moved out of the country and the kidnappers find out who she is, they might never find her, and she’ll most likely be killed.
Things get complicated when the details of her kidnapping are exposed, revealing the misdeeds of her family and the political agenda of the figures surrounding her father. Kilmer then has to decide if it’s enough just to follow orders or if seeing the mission through is the right thing to do.
I really like this movie a lot for several reasons. The first of which is that it’s kind of a hidden gem. It was a small-budget movie that wasn’t marketed very heavily, so you tend to feel that by being a fan, you’re in an exclusive club. You’ve discovered something cool that most people don’t know anything about. So, when I hear people say how much they loved Taken, I fight the urge to keep this one to myself and quietly judge them. Instead, I say, “Have you ever seen Spartan?”
I also love that this film is an example of non-traditional storytelling that works. The story thrives on the idea of need-to-know. The typical flow for characters like Val Kilmer’s is that you start off knowing little to nothing about them, and then as the story progresses, you get more background information. And by the end, you know everything about who they are, and all the mystery is gone. In Spartan, the lead character is shrouded in mystery. You don’t know the details of his background, how he spends his days, other people in his life, whom he works for; you don’t even know his real name by the end of it. All you know is that he is/was military spec ops, highly trained, and extremely effective. You know this by his interaction with people throughout the movie, not because he says it in some glorious line of dialog.
Writer/director David Mamet crafts this story around the idea of deeds, not words. You get to know the characters in this movie more by what they do, not so much by what they say. And when it comes to the dialog, Mamet seems to tap into a kind of insider shorthand. Communication that’s designed to be efficient for people that operate in this world while at the same time maintaining a level of secrecy and ambiguity. We, as viewers, start to understand the messages beneath the words as we go along. There are a few instances where the lines come out a bit clunky. But in Kilmer’s case, even the clunky lines have context.
And that brings me to what I love most about Spartan. Unlike so many of the movies we get from Hollywood, Spartan is a film that doesn’t talk down to its audience. It doesn’t take the position that everyone watching the movie is so stupid that every detail of the story has to be spoon-fed to them just to make sure they get it. Spartan assumes the audience is smart enough to follow along while taking a tour of a world they have no experience in. They can translate words into ideas, pick up clues and learn as they go. David Mamet understands that knowing a character’s deep dark secrets isn’t what makes them interesting. Wanting to know more is what makes them interesting. It’s honestly refreshing to see a movie like that the few times Hollywood allows one to leak out.
So, for all you fans of Taken out there, I highly recommend giving Spartan a chance. Granted, it’s not for everyone. But whether you like it as much as I do or feel like it’s not your kind of movie, I guarantee it’ll make you think. And good art does that.