Taken is a fast-paced action film about a retired CIA agent on a quest to track down his 17 year old daughter who was kidnapped by Albanian slave traders whilst on holiday in Paris, France. The protagonist is Bryan Mills, ex CIA agent and father to 17 year old daughter Kim. His ex-wife, Lenore, divorced him due to his heavy work commitments, so much so that he was unable to be present in both Kim and Lenore’s lives most of the time. He retires with hopes to make up for the lost time towards his daughter and to spend more time with her. Taken focuses on the premise of Good vs Evil as Bryan, the concerned and protective father, singlehandedly takes down the bad people responsible for his daughter’s abduction. Themes include family, revenge, sex …show more content…
At one point of the movie, Bryan looked for the Albanians pretending to be Jean-Claude to collect the bribes. Bryan, an American pretending to be a Frenchman, scolded the Albanians, saying that they “take advantage of the system” and that they think the French’s tolerance of them means that the French are “weak and helpless”. He continues to add that their arrogance offends him. Why does Bryan, an American, care about the twisted and corrupted situation in France? The director of Taken is Pierre Morel who is born and raised in France. With that being said, this was most likely the director’s allegory about the situation in France with the growing Muslim population. The choice to use an American stand-in instead of a French character could probably be because they do not want to explicitly portray Islam in a bad light to avoid offending any …show more content…
It was satisfying, albeit unrealistic, to see how the protagonist is so skilled in taking people down and killing them effortlessly. Talking about realism, there were many scenes where Bryan was faced with a group of men and he managed to fight them off singlehandedly because the group of people he was fighting attacked him one by one. In a real life fight situation, it is uncommon that a group of gangsters will be ousted by one single man. Therefore, I find the directing unrealistic as it focuses too much on Bryan being an unbreakable hero whose odds was always in his
The novel Nukkin Ya is a compelling book, written in the perspective of the character Gary Black, the author of the text is Phillip Gwynne. The novel is set in rural South Australia for Australian readers. The novel conveys a number of themes and messages including racial difference, love verse hate and the ability and choice to move on. These are depicted by the literally techniques of imagery, literary allusions and intertextuality.
In “The Great Taos Bank Robbery” The Theme is Comedy. If you read this to a child he would laugh out loud around 5 times. Many of the parts in “The Great Taos Bank Robbery” are so stupid that it is funny, like waiting in line for the bank trying to rob it during rush hour or a man dressed up as a woman. In “Full Circle” the theme would be revenge. Not the revenge that one man does to another but one does to himself. Killing a girl is very bad. So when you read that part at the end that he crashes into the crane that is fixing the sign the girl broke when he shot her, you can only think, Karma. In “The Wasps Nest” the theme is probably about how just because you are dying doesn't mean you should take someone else with you. Making Claude buy cyanide so Harrison can kill himself and that will make Claude hang himself is pretty
There were many themes illustrated throughout the memoir, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael beah. These themes include survival/resilience despite great suffering, the loss of innocence, the importance of family/heritage, the power of hope and dreams, the effects of injustice on the individual, and the importance of social and political responsibility. Every theme listed has a great meaning, and the author puts them in there for the readers to analyze and take with them when they finish reading the book.
Tim O’Brien intended audience was the future generations and other veterans.He used shame, guilt and morality in his story the things they carried. ‘‘On occasion the war was like a ping pong ball.You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance’’(O’Brien 32). In The novel the things they carried by Tim O'Brien the themes shame and guilt and morality are present by when he talks about all the different stories and things that happened to him through the years.How he has the guilt of surviving in war and his morality of learning to accept it.
“The Trusty” is a work of fiction, written by Ron Rash, that tells the story of a man and a woman who try to escape their lives. In this short story, Sinkler is depicted as a scandalous but also as a distressed character. Many painted events lead to the illustration of a peculiar setting in which Sinkler is experiencing some abnormal instances. Sinkler is not dead, and his characterization has lead the audience to believe his flawed mental state is the reason why.
Short Term 12 is an independent film that was released in 2013 and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The film takes place in a group home and shows the focuses on the journey of Grace who was physically, mentally, and sexually abused as a young child by her father and her boyfriend/fiancé Mason who grew up as a “punk kid” in foster care. The two put attempt to put their own lives aside when they both work at the group home in an attempt to better the lives of the troubled youth they work with at the home.
The Illegal, and Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill both contain several important themes. To explain, The Illegal features the main character’s loss of innocence, and the racism towards people because of their country of origin, and ethnic background. Next, Some Great Thing includes the themes of racism and prejudice towards not only the protagonist, but also to French Canadians because of the colour of their skin, or the language they speak, and the courage of characters to stand up for what they believe is right.
Movies, one can argue, are one of America’s greatest pastimes. Unfortunately, after 9/11, films have become increasingly prejudiced against American Muslims. In movies Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively. According to James Emery, a professor of Anthropology, Hollywood profits off of “casting individuals associated with specific negative stereotypes”. This is due to the fact that viewers automatically link characters with their clichéd images (Emery). For Muslims, the clichéd image is of the violent fundamentalist, who carried out the terroristic attacks on 9/11. As a result, the main stereotypes involved in movies display Muslims as extremists, villains, thieves, and desert nomads. An example of a movie that has such a negative character role for Muslims in film is Disney’s cartoon Aladdin, depict...
Are classic novels still being referred in modern society? Yes. Yes they do. – David Ngo claims
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire, takes place in the Land of Oz. It actually takes place forty years before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, and it tells the story of how Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, became so wicked (Fiction Book Review). This book was written in 1995. Maguire wrote this book in the early 1900’s when he was living in London. At this time, the Gulf War was just starting. Maguire was intrigued by the headline in the British Newspaper, the Times of London, that said, “Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?” Months later, there was an incident where several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler. While the British press was paying attention to the crime,
From the beginning of colonization, the French disliked the native Algerians’ Islamic religion and they tried to eliminate it all together. The french thought they could do so by introducing more French culture into their society. By doing so, French culture was thoroughly integrated and it made Islamic culture almost obsolete. Though the other French settlers approved of the assimilation of the Algerians and them being granted citizenship, most disagreed with any action attempting to give equal rights to the Muslims. By the end of the nineteenth century, the people of the Muslim majority were considered second-class citizens in comparison to those of the European minority. This was because of colonial policies passed by the French. Other laws also looked down upon Muslim Algerians. They were defined as "subjects" and unless they agreed to cease following Islamic laws, they would not be considered citizens (A...
In the story “Recitatif” author Toni Morrison, published in 1983, tells a story of two young girls, Twyla and Roberta, with two different ethnicities, who grow up in an orphanage together. Due to the fact that the story is narrated by Twyla, it seems natural for us the readers to associate with this touching story, as many of us have encounter racial discrimination back in the 1980s, making it clear that Morrison states the two girls grow up to always remember each based on the similarities and the childhood they both encounter together, come from different ethnic backgrounds, and as the story reveals, destiny is determined to bring the girls’ path together.
In the first scene we observe a Muslim man inside a firearm store, attempting to buy a gun. The owner is a white Caucasian male that presents a negative attitude towards the customer because of his Muslim background. This feeling triggers in the owner, negative attitudes based on the assimilation and stereotypes with the Muslim race. Being immediately associated with the Al Qaeda terrorist group, which was responsible for suicidal bombers that have killed thousand of Americans.
Ernest Hemingway uses the various events in Nick Adams life to expose the reader to the themes of youth, loss, and death throughout his novel In Our Time. Youth very often plays its part in war, and since In Our Time relates itself very frequently to war throughout; it is not a surprise that the theme of youthful innocence arises in many of the stories. In “Indian Camp” the youthful innocence is shown in the last sentence of the story: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” (19) When this sentence and the conversation Nick and his father have before they get on the boat are combined in thought it shows that because of Nicks age at the time that he does not yet understand the concept of death.
Herbert George (H.G.) Wells’ 1895 scientific romance novella, The Time Machine, is considered to be one of the forerunners of the science fiction genre. Whilst the story was not the first to explore the concept of time travel, it is quite significant for its pseudoscientific account of how time travel could perhaps occur, this interpretation has shown to be quite influential to numerous productions in both media and literature. Wells explores a number of themes throughout this novella, however there are three prominent ones, the relativity of time, social Darwinism and evolution, and capitalism. These themes explore concepts which are relevant to society and creates connections with the intended 19th century audience.