3. The Unpolished Dialogue
The dialogue exchanges in
Taken are absolutely terrible. They're lines from a first draft, at best, as if written by somebody who has seen seen way too many American blockbusters and appears to be writing a parody. Take the scene with Mills and his buddies sitting around for a BBQ chatting happily, for example, living the all-American dream. It comes across like some twisted satire on American culture written by a bunch of European propagandists. The actors actually look dumb saying the lines. Same goes for
Taken 2, in which the lines sound as though they've been written by an American, translated by a Frenchman into French, and then back into English again. These bloops were forgivable in
Taken because the rest of movie gave us great action and badass Neeson, but
Taken 2 relents on those aspects which means the actual script is more noticeable (and more laughable). Besson's latest efforts have all embraced these odd instances of dialogue (
Lockout, I'm looking at you). If these are supposed to be extremely clever meta-references to American movies and the way the US perceives itself in cinema, then, bravo. But they're not, are they?