Good Luck

            In the film Taken, Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA operative, failed husband, and loving father. Neeson is such a cowboy in this movie. As Lance points out in the Cowboy lecture, the most common attributes of a cowboy are that he is “white, male, masculine, self-sufficient and self-reliant, often dealing with Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, or other foreign threats.” (Eaton Web) Check, check, check, check, check. Neeson’s daughter is kidnapped in France, and Neeson employs his supremely badass skills in foreign threat operations to track her down and bring her home safely.

            I am not particularly an action movie guy. I like the action movies from the eighties, and I think the ones that come out today, like most films coming out today, are awful. Additionally, I cannot stand the tough guy or cowboy mentality. Taken, though. This movie is so good. Neeson goes to Europe by himself and takes on an entire network of human traffickers, starting at the bottom and working his way up to the top. 

One of the best scenes in the movie, when the action begins its ascent to the climax. Source.

            Neeson is clearly having a hard time adjusting to his life outside of the CIA. The viewer gets the impression that he is most comfortable in his CIA skin, and he has a harder time adapting to day-to-day civilian life. It is similar to the western dynamic of “Life still being worked out”. In that sense, we can think of his work in the CIA being “the wild west”, and his more calm life outside of work being “move civilized, back east”. Neeson’s struggle is real, as he is the greatest father ever in the western environment where his daughter is about to die, and a pretty crummy father back east where things are calm. If you haven't seen this movie (which I highly doubt), than see it forthwith. It is awesome.