Thanks. I will not see this movie and will tell everyone about it. Muslims as heroes? What? Unbelievable. Like making Nazis heroes during WW2.

Fred on February 18, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Liam Neeson was Vanessa Redgrave’s son-in-law. What else ya gotta know?

OT: True. I usually mention that and hadn’t here. Thanks for the reminder. DS

Occam's Tool on February 18, 2011 at 12:46 pm

Movies schmovies! I’m watching THE DAYTONA 500 this weekend!

BOOGITY! BOOGITY! BOOGITY! LET’S GO RACIN’ BOYS!

There is NO Santa Claus on February 18, 2011 at 12:48 pm

An illegal alien named Biko. Another cute way of sticking it to the West.

Steve Biko was an anti-apartheid ‘activist’ in the 70s in South Africa who was shot to death by the police and martyred. Biko had a revolutionary ideology which was influenced and determined by enemies of Western civilization and values.

LA: Great point. I wondered if it was a reference to Steven Biko or “just an accident,” which never happens with Hollywood. In this movie, Biko is killed/”martyred” by “evil” big business (their assassins). DS

Little Al on February 18, 2011 at 1:01 pm

I should add that Steve Biko was quite likely tortured by police. However, that does not change the fact that he was an enemy of the civilized world.

Little Al on February 18, 2011 at 1:05 pm

“Al Qaeda/Yasser Arafat concubine Vanessa Redgrave”

I had to check out Debbie’s ’07 post to see if Redgrave was just big a fan of Arafat, or if she meant that Redgrave functioned as his actual “receptacle”. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had.

Learned something else from that post. I knew how twisted Vanessa was, but I didn’t know her sister was likewise as sick, deranged and evil.

CornCoLeo on February 18, 2011 at 1:35 pm

As for genetically modified foods, they are foods modified with nutrients to prevent blindness and to create crops that are resistant to pests that consume food that people eat.

The Left hates technology that save human lives as much it hates the agri-business corporations that try to lower high food prices resulting from infestation, waste and spoilage so people can afford it and live longer and healthier lives.

We’ve already seen the anti-intellectualism of the Left this week. What people don’t know is they don’t care about human welfare either.

Just don’t look for Hollywood to ever reveal the Deranged Left is as much a villain in today’s world as is Islam.

NormanF on February 18, 2011 at 1:49 pm

Frake-Corn. The left prefers the masses ignorant and props up targets like genetically modified food as examples of evil capitalism, while of course hating farmers in general, as farmers tend to be conservative. Then they whine about how removed everyone is from the “food producing process” and quote that Michael Pollan douchebag. Talk about food ethics and morality of animal slaughtering, but most of them think a healthy fetus is something that can be tossed out like last night’s leftovers.

Hipsters Don't Feed the World on February 18, 2011 at 2:15 pm

Little Al:

Steven Biko was an enemy to the civilized world because “the civilized world” (apartheid South Africa) was an enemy to him. Look, the capitalists didn’t do squat for the folks living under apartheid. Instead, they lined up to trade with and get rich off that regime. So, it was the Marxists who offered people like Biko and Mandela a way out – their only way out – and they took it. Even if you can make the case that South African blacks have it worse today than they did under apartheid, that still doesn’t justify apartheid, nor does it negate the fact that any black South African would have had to have been certifiably nuts not to oppose that brutal system and the people that inflicted it on him. Look: THE WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS WOULDN’T EVEN ALLOW THE BLACK SOUTH AFRICANS TO LEAVE! Read Mark Mathabane’s biography about what he had to go through in order to escape apartheid South Africa. The apartheid regime wanted to keep all of them in that country so they would have an unending source of cheap labor. Biko declared war on the west only after and because the west declared war on him first. Western values … sure maybe for whites South Africa was a free country and a democracy, but for blacks there was no difference between South Africa and Cuba or the Soviet Union.

Gerald on February 18, 2011 at 2:50 pm

Thanks for preventing me from making a huge mistake and supporting these neo Fascists

ebayer on February 18, 2011 at 3:14 pm

The real reason why they won’t do a Cold War villain is because the folks who make movies like this – which is basically most of Hollywood – sincerely believe that the wrong side won the Cold War, and wish that the conflict had ended differently. Remember how they went nuts when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union evil and predicted its demise: it was because they wanted the Soviet Union to win, and for us to wind up more like them. I still remember Gloria Steinem defending the Soviet subjugation of Afghanistan by stating “the Soviets were allowing the Afghan females to receive an education.” (The left was only against “occupation” and “colonialism” when we did it. When the commies did it, it was progress. Just like the next anti-war activist to protest a war started by the commies will be the first. Oh, but those weren’t wars, those were “people’s uprisings”; Che Guevara and all that.)

As far as the left is concerned, the Cold War is back on. They see the Muslims as allies. They believe that they can win Muslims over to their side, and use them to defeat the west. (That’s why the left has abandoned Israel; the Muslims are far more numerous and control the oil reserves. Plus, Zionism shifted from is largely secular and socialist beginnings to being dominated by religious capitalists.) The left is willing to put up with the Muslim religion for now (as they did the same with Jews and with black civil rights era Christians) because that religious worldview includes an opposition to capitalism (Islamic economics is not quite socialism, but it is strikingly similar in some areas) and western culture and civilization.

The left is hoping that they can entice the Muslims to join them against their common enemy, and once that enemy is defeated, the Muslims will naturally join them as progressives. (The left believes that conservatism is the “root cause” for the way that Muslim people and regimes behave the way they do … you know, the colonialism and neocolonialism thing … I still remember their blaming the genocide in Sudan on western oil companies.)

That’s why these folks are teaching kids in schools about how the Moors weren’t vicious marauders at all, but instead benevolently liberated Europe from the ravages of the Dark Ages, and how their progressive program to bring reform and culture to Europe was rudely, cruelly interrupted by those nasty Crusaders! Before then, Islam societies were advanced and enlightened, and Christians, Jews, Muslims (and atheists!) lived together in peace side by side! (According to this line of thinking, it was the Christians who taught Muslims how to hate and kill Jews. And, er, everybody else. Including each other.)

It’s why these folks are celebrating this “wave of democracy protests” in the Middle East, despite knowing full well that these regimes are just going to elect Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas/PLO types just like they have in every other Muslim “democracy.” These folks don’t have the least problem with these regimes being “anti-western” because they’re just as anti-western as the Muslims, if not more so. They just hope that these democracies that they want to see in the Arab/Muslim world will (mostly!) abandon violence and instead use economics and U.N. politics as their weapons against the west.

Take Iran, for instance. The only thing that they want to see changed about that regime is their repressive nature (especially against women and atheists) and their nuclear program (kinda sorta … I think that they are willing to let Iran have nukes so long as they promise – pinkie promise! – not to use them!). Everything else about Iran, including their ties with Venezuela, Russia, North Korea etc. they like. The enemy of their enemy is their friend. That’s why there isn’t much complaining when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes to the U.N. and rants against capitalism and the west: they agree with virtually everything that he says. If he would only stop denying the Holocaust, our universities would give the guy honorary doctorates, Katie Couric would gush about him to her (tiny) audience, and he’d win the Nobel Peace Prize.

When folks who make movies like this look at the people in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia etc. they don’t see potential recruits for Al Qaeda and Hizbullah. Instead, they see people who would contribute the Muslim perspective to their nice little interfaith section on HuffingtonPost.com (and to the political and economics sections as well).

That is the real battleground. So, you should consider that this movie isn’t made for the American audience at all, but for the folks in Baghdad, Cairo and Gaza. They want the Muslims to watch these movies and come away thinking “these guys are on our side, and we should join them!” THAT is the real agenda.

Gerald on February 18, 2011 at 3:24 pm

Sorry Gerald, I don’t buy that. Sounds to me kinda like saying that the murderous rioting in Watts, Harlem, Detroit, etc. took place because evil capitalist society denied these criminals everything they wanted, or that antiwar terrorists in the 60s killed bank guards etc. because the evil US capitalists wouldn’t (at least for a while) give the Vietnamese Communists everything they wanted.

Granted apartheid was unjust and oppressive — but someone with an adult mentality would have tried to fight through appropriate channels instead of allying himself with very despicable element under the sun. And sometimes if that isn’t possible. he might have to defer his goals. Bad as apartheid was, it does not compare with the evils and mass killings of the forces Biko was allied with.

And ironically, you practically acknowledge that blacks have it worse today than they did then. But of course, that doesn’t matter, does it?

Little Al on February 18, 2011 at 3:58 pm

LA, yup. There is a reverse racism here that holds if blacks rape and kill blacks (post-apartheid South Africa has the highest crime rate in the world) no one cares. But if whites kill blacks, that is the greatest evil in the world and every one must be opposed to it. And the truth is the ANC then as now, allied itself with the Soviet Union and every tyranny on the planet. They were never and aren’t model democrats. But in the leftist rewriting of history, the Third World is always morally superior to the West. Blacks are superior to whites and Arabs are superior to Jews. You do see the pattern here, don’t you? That worldview is not going to disappear in our lifetime and cuz its an ideological belief, reality won’t have the slightest affect on it even if what the Left is supporting today would be a disaster for both the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East.

NormanF on February 18, 2011 at 4:17 pm

Look, the best thing to do is to boycott Hollywood, period. If you feel inclined to watch a movie, rent a DVD through Netflix. Better yet, read a book, or go to a museum. Go out to a good restaurant.

I am sick of the uber liberal movie stars (not really actors, just stars) preaching communism, while they collect $20-40 million a picture, and hire illegal aliens to clean their pools in their four or five houses. The studios charge the movie theatres so much for the movies (sometimes 60% of the ticket prices that the only way for the movie houses to make money is to overcharge for popcorn, soda, etc.

Nope, stay home, and let Hollywood fall into the depths of Hell in the next earthquake (and yes, the concept of hell is mentioned in the Old Testament, when a rebellious group of Israelis were swallowed up by the earth in what was obviously an earthquake).

Jonathan Grant on February 18, 2011 at 4:42 pm

Also, if the Hollywood stars are so concerned about the environment and food distribution, how come each of them seem to have four to five kids? These kids are taking the food from the mouths of the Third World, according to liberal thinking.

Jonathan Grant on February 18, 2011 at 4:43 pm

My wife acts like she doesn’t know who I am too. I think I am a better husband when we role-play. You be the wicked witch hillary and I’ll be the Wizard of Hope.

Bill Clinton on February 18, 2011 at 6:01 pm

This is the first review I have seen that mentions the genetically modified food angle. Thank you Debbie! I also never heard of the Saudi prince or the helpful Stasi agent or the poor, maligned African illegal. Most reviews only mention the cab driver. I knew this wasn’t going to be “Taken 2” but there is no way I’m watching this now.

DavidJ on February 18, 2011 at 11:11 pm

And it is a slur on the capitalist world to say they didn’t do ‘squat’ for those living under apartheid. South Africa was made an international outcast in spite of its rich natural resources and its standing as a bulwark against international communism. The sanctions definitely weakened it in the 80s, and played a significant role in the downfall of apartheid. I guess in today’s environment though, everything has to happen instantly, just like democracy (at least for some people) has to happen instantly in Egypt, along with all the other examples of instant entitlement and instant gratification that plague us in the United States.

Little Al on February 19, 2011 at 7:41 am

To hell with hollywierd, Biko and all the lefties out there who love them. Once again I don’t have to waste my time and money on a lefty flick that should never have really been made. I’d wager 95% of the dolts that end up watching it won’t even know what they’re watching until it’s too late.
I find it sad that now that S. Africa has fallen into the lawless mess it is now, the hollywierd a-holes that ran their sucks about apartheid are mostly friendly toward the Chavez regime and can be seen wearing Che gayvera t-shirts. STUPID!

samurai on February 19, 2011 at 10:13 am

I musy admit that I am not a movies fan. I have little interest in movies and I do not waste anytime watching them.

G. R. SCHAROUBIM on February 19, 2011 at 1:23 pm

It’s movies like this one that keep uninformed Yanks misconstruing notions like DS’s opinion on Lara Logan. The only other person I heard have the same brave (and correct) opinion is a satellite radio host with the initials AW.

This is why the fifth column is winning.

I enjoyed the Biko debate. As soon as I read the name in DS’s review, I had the same notions.

Skunky on February 19, 2011 at 2:54 pm

Debbie the Jews who produced this movie are probably more to blame for the PC content than LN. And he did kill those oily sheiks who bought his daughter at the end of “Taken”. These Hollywood guys rather have long careers and get invited to stuff than be known as the short Jew who make racist movies and has to watch their back, I think.

A1 on February 19, 2011 at 4:42 pm

I just viewed the film last night with a woman friend and enjoyed it immensely. It was on one level, a great thriller with plenty of twists and harrowing escapes populated with beautiful and dangerous women particularly the principles, daring Diane Kruger and the luscious January Jones.

That being said I am inclined to agree with Debbie’s analysis that the motivation behind the production of this film was deeply anti-capitalist, pro-Muslim and pro-illegal and anti-West, in short pure Hollywood counter-culture propaganda.

I came of age in the late sixties when it was fashionable to demonize Senator Joe McCarthy as a radical right wing extremist for his Senate commission hearings (witchhunts) during the “fifties” against many Americans accused of being communist infiltrators. It turned out of course that many of these allegations were false but some were in fact true. The Senate hearings did however shine light on the fact that many producers, directors and writers in Hollywood, if not card carrying members of the Communist Party, were far to the Left in their biases and as a result many films coming out of that era had a decidedly anti-Western/anti-Capitalist slant.

Nothing much has changed. A U.S. movie industry which should for the most part be defending (if not promoting) pro-Western values is in fact constantly promoting the agenda of our ideological enemies. Kudos to Debbie and others like her who remain eternally vigilant.

Arn Hatfield on February 19, 2011 at 8:41 pm

Well, I sort of missed that whole thing about Diane Kruger’s character being a Bosnian Muslim (I was thinking she was Polish at first), but the Saudi prince was over the top. He arrives at the hotel with a gaggle of supermodels in tow and all I’m thinking is “female genital mutiliation? Honor killings? Driver’s licenses?” But my main complaint was that the central focus was a rip-off of the Bourne Identity: “Who Am I” leading man, randomly picked from the crowd female accomplice, methodical, silent assassins in pursuit, car chase (two – even better than one) in a European city . . . even false passports. That, and plot defects that were howlers (the BEST assassination team in the world let some unknown taxi driver take care of the oh-so-important brief case?).

gmartinz on February 20, 2011 at 4:46 pm

Isn’t itinteresting how feeble scientific minds develope the skills to fight off hired killers and employ all kinds of evasive tactics to fend them off?

They didn’t teach us that in biology class. Maybe at the university level?

P. Aaron on February 21, 2011 at 8:49 am

The movie completely lost any potential appeal when they started hammering on the ‘progressives are the good guys’ theme. I could not wait to get out of the theater but sat quietly so I wouldn’t disturb others. And towards the end when the Saudi prince and the scientist announce their “gift to the world” in the form of genetically modified corn I got nauseous.

mg24 on February 22, 2011 at 3:11 pm

I am shocked at this website and all the posts and comments in it. I cant believe such hate and ignorance exists in this world. Debbie you are clearly a crack head. STOP PROMOTING HATE YOU IDIOT

sm28 on February 23, 2011 at 4:34 am

ditto!… Wow! What a lot of closed minded experts there are on this page stirring up hatred based on mythconceptions about other people who you have never met and business warlords you know absolutely nothing abouT !

So long as this kind of conversation ignites off the back of politically biased propaganda as per Debbie Schlussel’s offerings to the world, any chance of peace moves another step awaY.

So I ask all of you: “What is it you want in your lifetime? Peace or war? How many innocent people have to be slain to undo th emisgivings of a misguided mindset?”

History is full of examples, go read some of that instead of aimlessly following this clat-trap…, or desperately seeking meaningful movies… you might even enlighten yourself!

I likewise cannot believe such ignorance still exists in this, the information & communication age. I think y’all need to get off yr arses and get out and see the world and meet some of yr “supposed enemies” and work out just what it is you don’t have in common.

Hats off to the critical thinkers,… Debbie you are not one of them…!! Please stop peddling political hatred and brandishing yer bullshit propaganda on the global consciousness. If yu feel the need to use your life to make a change, that’s wonderful – but go Meet some people doing positive things and spread some light, instead of all this darkness yu have inside yu.

Thank you.

ronald on February 28, 2011 at 7:02 pm

Hello , i disagree with what you wrote because first of all im an Arab and especially from Saudi , i loved the story of the film but not the “prince shada” part .. i thought its weird for a hollywood film to make a saudi muslim prince a hero .. well was he a hero ? just because he donated money? well its true in real life i must say lot’s of rich Saudi business men and from the royal family do that and speaking of prince shada, what were they thinking when they called him shada ? i laughed out loud! i mean its not even arabic! ..
any how i tell you when i saw that there was a saudi prince involving i said to my self and here they come with the sterotypes .. i tell you there were some which i didnt like in this movie but its a good ending .
i dont know why you people have haterd and anger they always make muslims and arabs that there the bad people in most hollywood movies and its all wrong and disgusting , i once gave a promise to my self to stop watching movies of the stupid sterotypes,and of course there all not true!!!!

Lena on March 25, 2011 at 2:38 am

and i want to add, there are good jews and bad jews , good christens and bad christens , and also good muslims and bad muslims .. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THERE ALL BAD!!!!!

Lena on March 25, 2011 at 2:43 am