Director: Pierre Morel
Writers: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Stars: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen
Log Line: A retired CIA agent travels to Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
The real attraction here is that the first film was a success: Did $226M worldwide off $25M budget. But even more interesting is that the sequels did even better. TAKEN 2: $376M w.w. off $45M budget.
TAKEN 3: $325M w.w. off $48M budget.
Moral Premise Statement: Ignoring the presence of evil leads to danger and death; but awareness and prevention of evil leads to safety and life.
Two charts and some explanation should suffice.
DISCLAIMER: The two charts in this post are significantly determined by my subjective evaluation of what is "a beat" and how "intense" the action is in that beat. If I did this again, the charts would look a little different. If you were to do this, they might look a lot different.
BASIS OF ANALYSIS: Most movies move through "sequences" and climax in "moments." "Moments" are often "turning points," "disasters," or "act climaxes." Typically a sequence might have a screen duration of 8-11 minutes, and the climactic moment at the end of the sequence might be 1-4 minutes long. Elsewhere on this blog I write about Paul Gulino's Sequence Approach of dividing the feature motion picture into 8 shorter "sequence" movies, that when strung together gives you the full length feature. At the end of each sequence is a climax, disaster or turning point of some type. What we tend to find is that moments are portrayed in real time and involve a lot of tension, action or decision making; while sequences are portrayed as taking hours or days and involve less tension, little action and are used to "setup" the next moment, or turning point. This sort of structure is very evident in TAKEN.
CHART 1: Beat Action vs. Beat Duration in TAKEN (2008)
This first chart is something new for me. It shows in blue the action intensity of each dramatic "beat" on a scale of 1-10. The orange shows the corresponding "beat" duration in minutes. Those familiar with the beat structure I teach may remember that a motion picture typically as somewhere between 13-22 major beats. The chart above has 34. I didn't add anything, I simply split up some of the long sequence beats (that could be 12-15 min long) into collections of scenes that seemed to go together as a short sequence. One of the guidelines here were "set pieces" where a great deal of action took place and was isolated. In a movie like TAKEN our hero (Bryan Mills) is on a hunt and he moves from location to location, or set to set, in his pursuit. That's why there are 34, and not 22 or less. Thus, in the chart above the x-axis divisions are equal, and the duration of the 34 beats varies from about 25 seconds to 5 minutes and is indicated by the height of the peaks and valleys of the orange area.
OBSERVATION: I was actually looking for a pattern and I may be reading into this more than is evident. But I have a theory that in good action thriller films, as we move through the story, the sequences get shorter and the moments get longer. Since the moments are where the action is, such a plan would accelerate the action as we get closer to the end. Also, since sequences set up moments, they can be shorter and shorter toward the end because our knowledge about the story world increases as we move deeper into the story and so we need to know less for each new setup.
The above chart suggests this theory. The volume of the orange (beat duration) clearly decreases as the movie unreels, and the the blue (action intensity) clearly increases correspondingly.
Okay, enough of that. Here's the mother-load.
CHART 2: Action Intensity vs. Minutes in TAKEN (2008)
(Click on the chart to enlarge it.) The data of the two charts comes from the same action analysis—that is, the same 34 beats used in Chart 1. Here however, each beat's length is visualized by the width of each column (from about 25 seconds to 5 min 18 seconds).
LABELS
The round tangerine circles indicate important moments:
- I.I. = Inciting Incident.
- A1X = Act 1 Climax
- A2 = Beginning of Act 2 (Crossing the Threshold)
- PPA = Pinch Point A
- MOG = Moment of Grace (Mid Point)
- PPB = Pinch Point B
- PPB2 = Another Pinch Point in Act 2B.
- A2X = Act 2 Climax
- R = Resurrection Beat
- A3X = Act 3 Climax (Final hand to hand battle)
GOALS
Bryan has two goals stated and implied in the Act 1 Climax. Each goal has three parts.
Goal 1. Re: the Kidnappers: "I will look for you. I will find you. I will kill you." (Explicitly stated)
Those three goals are achieved at G:1A, G:1B, and G:1C.
2. Re: his daughter, Kim: "I will look for you. I will find you. I will save you." (Implied)
Those three goals are achieved at G:2A, G:2B, and G:2C.
Notice how the goals are established simultaneously just before he crosses the threshold into Act 2. These are the story questions that the audience hangs on and hopes are all answered: "Will Bryan look for, find and kill the bad guys; and will he look for, find and save his daughter?" Notice how the achievement of the second and third goals are spread out, so the audience always has something to look forward to. A good story holds a carrot out in front, leading us to the end, and the end better be the most important of all the goals. Imagine how dull this movie would be if Kim was rescued early in Act 2—there might be three more goals to achieve, but since Kim is rescued, who cares. "Let's leave." Rightly, the filmmakers rescue Kim at the very end.
THREE DAUGHTERS
Assuming you've watched the movie, notice how there are three daughters that Bryan rescues, each foreshadows the rescue of Kim, his daughter. Notice also how the first rescue is from a knife wielding man -- as is the last. Notice how Bryan acts like a caring father to each of the girls, even though the first two are NOT his daughter. The filmmakers do a good job (casting mostly) by revealing the ironic character of our hero. They never say it, they just show it—he is both extremely ruthless and kind. This intrigues our audience in deep, deep ways. It is classically ironic and provides a secondary hook to intrigue the audience.
I will not explain the various beat criteria and how this movie fits them, except to say it does with a few noteworthy exceptions.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
Exceptions to beat structure work when they are natural to the dynamic of the story. Usually such divergences enhance the organic and natural structure an audience expects. TAKEN is no exception regarding these exceptions.
1. MOMENTS and TURNING POINTS
Major Turning Points: Ideal vs. Actual
- Inciting Incident: Ideal 12.5%, TAKEN 15%.
- Act 1 Climax: Ideal 25%, TAKEN 30%
- Moment of Grace: Ideal 50%, TAKEN 54%
- Act 2 Climax: Ideal 75%, TAKEN 87%
- Final Conflict: Ideal 95%, TAKEN 94%
The differences here are all the consequence of respecting the story's dynamic. Noteworthy is that the Act 2 Climax (Near Death) is delayed because there are two wonderful Pinch Points in Act 2B.
2. NO TIME FOR DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
Notice that the Climax of Act 2 (NEAR DEATH) is slammed up next to Bryan's Resurrection Beat, when he pulls the steam pipe out of the ceiling. This again is a good example of the filmmaker respecting the dynamics of an action thriller in the third act. Who wants to wait around for some hero to mope. In DIE HARD, we have a Protagonist, and so the Dark Night of the Soul is a necessary couple of minutes, for John to mope about. There's even time for a confessional scene between the sinner (John McClain) and the authority figure or priest (Sgt. Al Powell). But TAKEN does not have a protagonist, it has a hero. The difference? See Hero vs. Protagonist post.
3. MOMENT OF GRACE
Normally, what happens at the mid point is that the protagonist recognizes the truth of the Moral Premise for the first time and makes some transformation toward it. He/she won't fully transform until Act 3, but at the mid point, there's a realization of what the character needs to do to achieve the goal.
But in a hero based movie, the story isn't about transformation of the hero, but the transformation of things around him or her. So, what do you do at the mid point? Here is what TAKEN does:
A. Bryan is offered grace the moment he sees Kim's jacket.
B. Bryan is offered grace when he realizes that here's an eye witness who has spoken with Kim.
C. Bryan makes clear and definite progress toward his ultimate goal by getting Kim's jacket, which he holds close to his heart minutes later when there's time to reflect. And this offers grace to the audience...that he's going to succeed in spite of all odds.
D. When the drugged girl comes around he gets his first direct information as to where Kim is...or was, as it turns out. It's a big dose of grace.
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