Disappointingly xenophobic
-
spookyrat1 — 13 years ago(March 16, 2013 08:17 AM)
Did I watch a different movie or something? The villains in this movie were the same as the villains in the first movie, Albanians, only they were relations out for revenge. Was this a major problem with the first film? Yes the majority of the Albanian population is Muslim, with a fair sized Eastern Orthodox minority, but I didn't see Islam as portrayed in a bad light. Similarly, I didn't see the film as being critical of Turkey either. I think the producers just wanted a different environment and Turkey geographically is relatively close to Albania
-
Matthor — 13 years ago(March 18, 2013 05:59 AM)
Finally someone gets to this point, a movie sequel with the same villains as the first? Perish the thought!!..
Not to mention that the first movie dealt with people trafficking which is a big problem in Eastern Europe and commonly perpetrated by Eastern European crime organisations. Colour me crazy but a fictional Albanian mafia fits that bill pretty nicely doesn't it?
Seriously, at what single point in the movie was any thing related to race or religion either negatively or overtly shoved in our faces?? I mean the closest they come to actually properly alerting you to the fact that there might be muslims in the movie, besides the covered women, is the shots of the mosques and the call to prayer which most of the movie going population would probably not even register.
I think the OP just needs to still their bleeding heart for 90 mins and enjoy Liam
Neeson kicking seven shades of crap out of the bad guys again. After all it is just a movie, a work of FICTION, not a social commentary or anything deeper than a thinly veiled excuse for guns, explosions and car chases. -
lunamuna — 13 years ago(March 24, 2013 10:44 AM)
Sure it's just a movie. But it's one of hundreds with a similar theme. Did you know that people outside of America and Europe actually watch Hollywood movies ALOT?? There's basically two major movie makers in the world - Hollywood and Bollywood. Very few countries have a movie industry to compete with that. Imagine if whenever there was a movie that featured your country, your people, people who share a religion with you, they were portrayed as criminals, terrorists, extremists or faceless (in a literal and figurative sense) women in black?
The reason people watched this movie and didn't pick up on any negative stereotypes with regards to Muslims, is because it's not something they care about. If you watched a Bollywood movie which portrayed America completely inaccurately, or portrayed Americans as gun toting villains who bomb their way through most of the world, then you would probably be on imdb bitching about that too.
The problem is Americans rarely get exposed to foreign films. Meanwhile, for the rest of the world, that is pretty much ALL they are exposed to. Don't you think this would build resentment? In the current political climate where America has basically been plundering the Muslim world for the decade, extremism is growing and we are being increasingly polarised into 'us vs. them'. Americans/Europeans are being conditioned to view Muslim people as rabid frothing at the mouth fundamentalists and Muslims are picking up on that.
My politics blog: http://politicasomnia.blogspot.co.uk/ -
done_holding_back — 13 years ago(March 18, 2013 11:09 AM)
The movie was very culturally inaccurate, there's no arguing against that. But if you use the word "racist" on IMDB you're going to have a bad time, too many emotional people on both sides of the discussion.
But yeah, they didn't try very hard to portray Turkey as anything more than Ubiquitous War-torn Arab Country #14. -
spookyrat1 — 13 years ago(March 21, 2013 03:23 PM)
"culturally inaccurate"
Let's see. Apart from the fact that it was a completely fictitious movie with a prepostrous plot, who or what was portrayed as "culturally inaccurate."
Was it America or Americans?
Was it Turks or Turkey?
Was it Albania or Albanians?
May be it was France or the French in that little bit in the beginning?
"they didn't try very hard to portray Turkey as anything more than Ubiquitous War-torn Arab Country#14"
LOL! I know Kim let off a couple of hand grenades but this is ridiculous. You must have mixed up Taken 2 with Lawrence of Arabia at the DVD store!
I'm not sure whether Turks nor Albanians would appreciate being categorised by you as "Arabs", since they aren't Arab countries, though I'm sure both countries have Arab minorities just as the USA does.
Who did you say was being culturally inaccurate?
"What are you going to do?"
"What I do best." -
done_holding_back — 13 years ago(March 22, 2013 07:01 PM)
I'm not sure whether Turks nor Albanians would appreciate being categorised by you as "Arabs", since they aren't Arab countries, though I'm sure both countries have Arab minorities just as the USA does.
I didn't call them Arabs. I said Turkey was portrayed as etc etc. You telling me that Turkey is not an Arab country is you agreeing with me. But I think you already know this.
Anyhow, you sound like someone who will just disagree with me until I give up so I'm going to skip to the end. You're right. I'm wrong. I retract all statements and concede. -
subase — 13 years ago(March 28, 2013 06:11 AM)
Sexual slavery, rape and violence towards women is endemic in the muslim world, and why should anyone be surprised?
Mohamed recommends enslaving the women of infidels (non-muslims), hitting women and killing infidels in general.
So sorry if there is little sympathy for the apparently somewhat MUSLIM albanian mafia men, which serve as the films enemies. The message seems to be kill evil, whatever religion or higher cause (justice) it claims to follow. -
NikolaAvramov — 12 years ago(June 29, 2013 09:08 AM)
You're not too sensitive - you've just missed the target (IMO).
This is as much of a racism and anti-Muslim - as presenting Nazi soldiers and connecting it with anti-German and anti-Catholic sentiment.
The sad fact is that Albanians run a huge white slavery deal. And that kidnapping is a part of it. Hell - their leader in Kosovo has his own harem of kidnapped girls from Eastern Europe.
There's nothing racist - it's just as bad when anybody else does it.
This movie series used one chain of white slavery for villains.
There's nothing inherent about crime in a nation, nor religion.
It's not even the way it was presented.
You have a gang of thugs, using numbers, violence and cunning.
Dead set on having a vendetta because somebody pushed back.
You are right - Hollywood is making their own people the protagonist and heroes in every story.
In this case - it's a nice change that somebody is rising the awareness about cartels such as this one.
In my city - I've learned about dozens of kidnappings done in this way. Worse - the girls weren't even abroad. They got taken while going grocery shopping. And then owned as slaves.
Si - there's no truth hurt, here.
There is a very ugly practice, out there.