Just Lie, Girl (Go On: You Know You Want To)

You can be sure that some post-modern, critical-whatever-studies types will hate this movie, what with the not-too-subtle “Death Wishy” attacks on non-Americans and the patriarchal revenge fantasy of it all. This is “Thelma and Louise” for fathers.

Okay, for starters, the film starts with Neeson appearing to be a kind of loser. Life has passed him by. He lives in a sad little apartment only a few notches better than a seedy motel room. Maybe he drinks too much. Regrets: he’s clearly had a few. Moreover, we learn fairly quickly that he quit his shadowy CIA work to make up for being an absentee dad and ruining his marriage. His daughter’s stepfather, meanwhile, is super rich. Neeson gets his daughter a Karaoke machine for her 17th birthday. Stepdaddy Warbucks gets her a horse. Neeson looks three feet tall.  

She wants to go to Paris for youthful adventure. But Neeson, like all fathers, knows better. We fathers are wise. Father knows best, damn it. It’s a dangerous world out there. Mom mocks him for being a smothering dork. The daughter wishes her dad could be cool like other dads. 

Neeson finally relents — but only because the ex-wife and daughter lie to him about her real plans. If they hadn’t failed him by lying, and instead told him the truth or listened to him everything would be ok. But no. The trouble with wives and daughters is they don’t blindly follow Dads’ perfect understanding of how the world works. Neeson lets her go to Paris. And, of course, within hours of landing, his daughter and her slutty blonde friend — who seduced Daddy’s little girl into going in the first place – are snatched by brutal Albanian white slavers.   

It’s the mother of “I told you so” moments. But fathers never get to enjoy such moments because we always have to fix the problems that inevitably arise when our women don’t listen.

-- Jonah Goldberg, reviewing the movie "Taken," and saying all the un-PC shit that Real Men resist screaming from rooftops - but say privately to each other - and not just on Big Hollywood.