As HBO's Band of Brothers is to Saving Private Ryan, Taken is to Close Encounters of the Third Kind: a mini-series elaboration of themes introduced by producer Stephen Spielberg's source flicks.
On the basis of the preview ep of this new ten-part series, it looks like Sci-Fi Channel may've gotten the better deal. Charting the lives of three families from the mid-forties to the present, Taken touches on U.F.O. mythology that's become more common currency since the days Richard Dreyfus first sculpted a mountain out of spuds. Some of this is thanx to Spielberg himself, of course. When one doomed character experiences contact on the same type of isolated country road we saw in Encounters, the moment can't help but recall the earlier scene in the Indiana countryside. (The car's electrical system dies mid-radio song, only to be revived several minutes later with the same song playing - one of those moments of pure movie time.)
But years of govt.-bred cynicism have dulled the Peter Pan optimism of the original. In place of saintly humanist Francois Truffaut, we now get a sociopathic military careerist overseeing things. Should've known that we were gonna be in for a darker trip once I saw Tobe (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) Hooper's name on the director's credits: the man is not exactly known for warm & fuzzy.
The opening two-hour ep is set in the mid-forties and follows three basic plotlines: the travails of Illinois family man Russell Keys (Steve Burton), seemingly abducted during the war and slowly remembering what has happened to him; the Machiavellian machinations of Owen Crawford (Joel Gretsch), an Army man looking to take advantage of the proliferation of sightings around Roswell, New Mexico; and Sally Clark (Catherine Dent), a waitress in Lubbock, Texas, who has the closest kind of encounter with a mysterious stranger "from Des Moines."
The first entry moves at a fairly decent clip - fifteen minutes into the show, and we've already seen our first alien skulking in a tree - thanks to Leslie Bohem's expedient script. Could've done without the sub-Bradburyish child's narration that crops up periodically (watching it w./ closed captioning reveals that the lyricism is courtesy a character named Allie - who we haven't met yet). But anyone with enough taste to end his premiere outing w./ a Bob Wills song has won me on his side for at least another episode.
Much of the cast of Taken, with the exception of Michael Moriarty, is largely unfamiliar (though in our house, we did a loud double-take when we realized that Angel's Darla was now a Midwestern housewife). The ship fx & aliens look cool (a pile of dead 'uns comes across as pretty rubbery, though). The extraterrestrial interlopers, we learn, can look like humans - but prolonged exposure to their presence appears to lead to nasty physiological side effects. Having just experienced Thanksgiving family time, I can relate.
Sci-fi Channel is scheduling this massive mini-series in solid weekday blocks, though fortunately for those of us with loyalties to other series, the net reruns each outing three times in a row the night it premieres. (Phew - and here I was worried about missing Kim Bauer's flight from a psycho abusive yuppie!) Can't blame Sci-Fi for plugging most of its weeknights w./ the Spielberg Show. In terms of network p.r., this is even bigger than the time South Park took on Crossing Over.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Blaine Hilton
I really liked the first part of this mini-series, but with all of the hype about it I don't think it lived up to it. With ads on Yahoo, other places on the internet, multiple TV channels, even when I went out and got the newspaper it was in a Taken plastic bag!
I hope it gets better.
2 - Jane Smith
Why am I still watching this? It's so bad I can't look away. It's like a train wreck. I just keeping hoping it will get better. Sigh. It's not.
It's not the actors' fault. The dialogue is just plain bad. The editing is choppy. And the director needed to look at his storyboard once in a while.
Stereotypes abound in Taken and the stereotypical military menace is the worst. "You're the sun and the moon." Good God, people. Hire a writer!
I expected more from the man who created the mythically dark AI. But that's another story entirely.
3 - Rex Ballard
I've really been enjoying Taken. Rather than focusing so heavily on special effects, Spielberg has chosen to leave more to the imagination, to leave more to the viewer. The net result is a more credible and interesting account. While the officers investigating the Extraterrestrial seem a bit overdone in their sinister character nature. Too little experience with upper levels of military command I would guess.
Still, it's interesting to see how well they researched the available information, and matched much of the publicly available information, often down to specific dates and reports.
The "Soap Opera" approach, tracing multiple threads among the three families, has made the whole thing much more interesting.
What is even more interesting is the way Spielberg has dealt with "What would the aliens be doing here"? Too often, the anwer is trivialized as "alien invaders", especially by the Military. Others fall into the "boy and his dog" like E.T. Others try do Mother (here to nurture us), Father (here to prevent us from doing something), Playmate (E.T., comedies), or researchers.
We may have attracted some attention in 1945, when we set off above-ground nuclear weapons, which may have acted like a "signal flair" being set off by a marooned traveller. Maybe they were just trying to find their stranded traveller.
Whether there are spaceships, how often they have come, and whether they have come again, or even if they are still interested, are interesting questions, for which I have no answers. Maybe we'll find out that Angels, Incubus, Succubus, and Aliens are all various versions of the same phenomenon, and we'll even understand the true cause. It's such a maze of "smoke and mirrors", cover-ups, vested interests, and hustlers, that it's hard to establish what, if anything might be real.
I enjoy the way the series is unfolding, encouraging the viewer to question, rather than spoon feeding the answers. It's likely that "Taken" will become a true classic, an entertainment which can be seen numerous times, and each viewing gives new insights and new questions.
Bravo to the Sci Fi channel for taking it on, and Bravo to Stephen Spielberg for really putting some effort into an interesting entertainment.
4 - DJ
The first episode was somewhat interesting, but the series has steadily gone downhill since. Abductions, creepy flashback memories of alien exams, crop circles, ancient burial grounds and of course the big, bad evil Roswell military guy. Ahhg! It's everything we've ever seen before randomly placed in one big mini-series. The writing and dialogue is so bad it's actually laugh out loud funny at times. I actually expected a lot more. I'd much rather be watching "V". The title itself sums up exactly how I feel watching this series.
5 - leafy
This is excruciatingly predictible and boring, but for some reason, i tune in every night, i guess i need to get a life. I thought the sex scene as aliens was pretty good tho. It could have been done in half as many episodes...will it ever end?
6 - Faith
In Part 9, inside the 'alien craft', when the soldiers encounter Heather Donahue's character, 'Mary Crawford'... what does she mumble 2 times before she says that line about 'all your memories, and all your fears'?
Can I get a transcript? Or a speach coach or a hearing aid? I hope someone out there knows... feel free to email me with the answer.
7 - Broken Record
Faith, I'm fairly sure it's the same thing in german. If you have a tape of ep4 you could compare to the last part of what the german scientist says as he's burning (it's around 1hr 15mins into the episode if you count ads). Lisa's grandfather says the german later in his office along with the english - "All your memories played back at once. All your memories and all your fears."
The DVD will probably have subtitles if you can wait that long. I don't see any full transcripts on the net yet.
8 - Faith
Broken Record, ah...thats what I get for not sprekenzie-ing... anyway... why do you suppose after 'seeing all your memories and all your fears' you start speaking German first, and then you say the same thing in English...despite the fact that your audience is english speaking? Is it a Nazi conspiracy? Are the aliens German?
9 - RockABA
Last Friday we saw the conclusion to the "Taken" mini-series. I personally found it very interesting. It first starts out with the alien abductions in the mid-1940's and spands three generations. The story itself revovles around three families: Clark,Crawford, and Keys.
The Clark family has a much closer encounter
than the others. Sally Clark meets a stranger
who wonders into town. He calls himself John.
He falls in love with Sally and later Sally becomes pregnant with John's baby. Sally names him Jacob. Jacob is a special boy with incredible powers. Jacob grows up and has a daughter of his own. But, she does gain his
special abilites. Lisa Clark (Jacob's daughter) is then taken and bred with Charlie's Keys. Now this series spands over nerely six decades.
Lisa has a baby (not really knowing who the father was) and names her Allie(Dakota Fanning). Through ten episodes Allie is narrator for the series(We don't get to see her until the fifth episode. Allie is is the result of this whole
alien mystery. She is more powerful then the aliens themselves. She can manipulate time, cause giant projections(Screen memories) over a wide range and can read our minds. With the government chasing her and her gray little friends too, it becomes more then a story about aliens. It has heart and character .
Watching three generations of people and how they react in such a hostile enviroment is an amazing subjest to touch basis on. This series would have been a blockbuster if it hit the big screen. The only problem with that idea is it's lage format. 20 hours of film and 2 hour episodes (And I thought Band of Brothers was long).
10 - RockABA
Oops, I messed up. Lisa does not gain Jacob's abilities.
11 - RockABA
This mini-series has left options open for a series.
12 - Faith
RockABA, great synopsis! Well done! I have to correct you on one thing. According to my calculations, the entire 10 Taken episodes was only 14 hours without commercials. What I find interesting is that over the course of 10 days, watching Stephen Spielberg Presents Taken, I watched 6 HOURS of commercials! Now THAT is definitely a Nazi conspiracy!
13 - broken record
Well, the german scientist was probably too preoccupied with burning to a crisp to think to tell Mary's grandfather what he saw in english.
Mary's grandfather could have related the phrase to his older son, and he could have told Mary. Who knows?
14 - MichaelSmallwood
Does someone know where I can get a copy of Allie's narratives?
Thanks
15 - sara
could someone please tell me the name of the song that appears when lisa and charlie go out looking for allie, and they end up going near the wallington's food and grain farm house with this guide
i am not quite sure, but it was a lovely song with the lyrics something like this
'just before it gets dark .... i promise you baby it will all be alright'
16 - Bill Sherman
Emmy Lou Harris did the song, but I'm not familiar enough with her discography to be able to track it down by title. (Perhaps someone out there with a fuller grounding in mainstream country can help?)
17 - The Theory
emmylou harris isn't really mainstream, tho...
peace.
18 - smiley
can sum1 post a site that has a transcript for the series.
19 - iceburn
would some1 know where i could find the lyrics for the song "just before it gets dark" ..
20 - mike
Does someone have a transcript of Allie's narratives???
21 - Kt
Does anyone know which actor played Charlie Keys?
22 - Bill Sherman
I'm boggled that this ten-month-old review still draws an occasional question. Considering that each query only stays up the short time it's on the Blogcritics' front page, it's kind of like tossing a message in bottle. . .
23 - Eric Olsen
Well, lots of people see it when it is up on the front page, and you get the email saying you have a comment, not that readers know that necessarily.
You want real weirdness look at the Tom Cruise post, or the Evanescence review link post, or the Rolling Stone guitar poll post.
The out of nowhere comments seem to come from the search engines.
24 - Werwolf
Alle Ihre Gedächtnisse in einem Zug, alle Ihre Gedächtnisse und Ihre ganze Furcht
All your memories all at once, all your memories and all your fears
25 - Daniel
Dear Stephen,
I am a great fun of your movies and hence have been inspired by your great work. Your work is nothing compaired to anything I have seen. Now I am encouraged and considering a career in your field, I am please seeking advice as to know the exact courses to take; so that I've able to do the kind of work you are doing. Thank you and hope to hear from you soon.