Hope It's Like Taken!
It would be a great movie if its like that :)
"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave." Gandhi
It was nothing like Taken. It was an all too real look at child trafficking in the modern world. Lewis is always a good performer but the three children were centre stage and uniformly excellent. A Nigerian girl brought in to work as a house slave, a Vietnamese boy brought in to look after a skunk farm and a Ukrainian boy sold as slave labour. The Nigerian girl wants to go to school but is terrified she will die because the traffickers have put a spell on her, the Vietnamese boy just wants to see the sun again after he is kept in perpetual artificial light in the skunk farm and the Ukrainian boy thinks England is the land of opportunity and wants to make some money for himself and his mother.
It wasn't too preachy and didn't sugar coat anything either. There were one or two moments that didn't ring quite true (spoilers below) but other than that it was a quality piece of television.
It's a shame there aren't people like Liam Neeson running around in real life dealing with the scum in this way.
SPOILERS
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There were a couple of moments where credulity was stretched slightly:
1) The Nigerian henchman casually staking out the carer's home on a quiet residential street and not attracting any attention.
2) The stabbing of the Ukrainian boy seemed very random.
I was confused as to why the boy was stabbed?
shareThat was the one thing I didn’t get either. He seemed to collide with another boy who stabbed him at random. It was bad enough the poor kid was thrown out on the street without shoes or a coat in the middle of the snow but the stabbing seemed too much. He had nowhere to go, no money and no friends as it was.
Carter, Lewis’ character, pinned his picture on a board next to that of the slave gang leader so he was obviously following the case and knew but couldn’t prove. I thought Lewis did a nice line in being reassuring and sympathetic to the kids whilst nurturing an intense anger towards the people who were exploiting them.
Perhaps the boy’s stabbing was a comment on the random brutality of modern crime-infested Britain? E.g.
‘Magda Pniewska, 26, died in crossfire between two gunmen in New Cross, south London …’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7398421.stm
‘… stabbed Terezia Sternbergerova, 25, in the back as she made her way home … Ms Sternbergerova, who was originally from Slovakia …’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4414593.stm
‘Karolina Mikolajewska, 20, was found dead in Clive Hayes's flat near Bristol in January. She had been strangled and suffered a fractured skull.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4994048.stm
Some country… do they come here expecting a land of milk and honey? That our policemen still patrol the streets in their famous helmets, exchanging ‘hellos’ with bowler-hatted men with furled umbrellas? After listening to their grandparents’ tales serving in the Free Polish, Free Czech forces in WW2?
Powerful programme.
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Still Scottish, Always British—Quis Separabit?
Snap!! When I saw that guy stalking out the care home day after day leaning against the lamp post I immediately thought in real life the police would have been called because he looked too suspicious, even when Lewis got into his car and paused before driving off with his daughter I thought he must have seen him since he was standing in the middle of the road looking less than inconspicuous. Also when that kid got stabbed I was like WTF!!!
I live in London and we don't have groups of kids running round stabbing random strangers.
I think it would have been better to have this over three episodes as there were some narrative flaws:
-We start the Vietnamese sequence focusing on a new arrival and then switch to Kim Pak who has been there a while (and a small gripe – that name sounds more Korean than Vietnamese)
-The Nigerian gangster standing unnoticed on a quiet street with no traffic in the snow, in broad daylight.
-Would people really ignore a crying shoeless child in the snow? You think someone would call the police if nothing else. Come on, we are not that heartless a nation are we?
-The random stabbing of Georgie after being cast out by the Dickensian slave gangster. If he had mouthed off at the kids the same way he did at the kids in school uniform he might have provoked one into stabbing him but the way it was put together didn’t really work
-The Nigerian gangster making veiled threats to Carter about his own daughter felt a bit too Hollywood. If you want to put yourself on a cop’s radar, threaten his family. Maybe it happens though
The focus was clearly on Rosemary's story so Georgie’s and particularly Kim Pak’s stories ended up playing second fiddle. Having said that, it showcased yet again that the Beeb can produce quality drama (Exile, Case Histories, Luther, Sherlock and of course Shadow Line are all recent examples). It was well written, well shot and thought provoking. The child actors were uniformly excellent and Damian Lewis was solid as ever. Unfortunately the Beeb doesn't have the budgets of American networks so compromises have to be made on some level, usually in terms of length/number of episodes.
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As for the Nigerian henchman not attracting attention—what would one say to the police?
‘Yes, sir, you say there’s a black man on your street acting suspiciously and you would like us to send somebody around. In what way is he acting suspiciously? He’s just standing there… Well, sir, it’s not a crime to stand on a public street even if one is black. However, it is a crime being racist and you may well be in breach of Section 31(1)(c) of the Crime & Disorder Act 1998, which we will take a very dim view of. What did you say your name and address was?’
The police often enough don’t turn up (or turn up way too late) for even actual crimes, let alone someone ‘acting suspiciously’:
‘Official: Police leave 2m crimes uninvestigated’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568991/Official-Police-leave-2 m-crimes-uninvestigated.html
‘When he finally forced his way into her home with a gun, she made a desperate 999 call. By the time the police arrived she and her son William were dead.’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jun/07/ukguns.features11
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Still Scottish, Always British—Quis Separabit?
I take your point. Yes, it could seem racist but on a quiet residential street, anyone who wasn’t known to locals would be noticed. It’s not like he was in a café across the street or anything where he could say he was killing time or whatever.
Yes, the guy has technically done nothing wrong but the carer was looking after two black girls so she couldn’t really be accused of being racist herself. She was also looking after a trafficked girl and knowing that the traffickers know where the carers live and that they might try and kidnap the girl, she would have a justifiable reason for calling the police when an unknown man who could be Nigerian starts lurking outside her house.
Moving into slightly different territory, predatory criminals like these guys rely on people’s civilised instincts. We don’t like to make a fuss, we don’t like to cause a scene or worse, embarrass ourselves. They take advantage of this to stack the deck in their favour and create an opportunity to do what they want. If you watch Crimewatch reconstructions, a lot of times people are aware of the bad guy(s) ahead of time. They get a bad feeling but don’t want to seem alarmist so look for a reason to ignore their instincts.
I agree it could have benefited from being longer, and also that the stabbing was contrived (although far from ‘science-fiction’: ‘A 12-year-old girl slashed across the face by another pupil …’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/4361724.stm; ‘Mr Lawrence intervened to stop the fight and came face to face with Chindamo, who punched and kicked the headmaster and then stabbed him in the chest. He later boasted of the murder in an amusement arcade.’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511121/Outrage-as-Lawrence-kil ler-is-allowed-out-of-prison.html; ‘The faces of the evil teenagers who killed a frail pensioner, then laughed as they dumped a wheelie bin containing her body in a canal have been revealed.’ http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/22907_teenage_faces _of_lilys_killers).
I don’t wish to be the sort of imdb commenter defending a film no matter how absurd; but for me Stolen ‘rang true’, and I found the death of Georgie very affecting, as he went from initial joy at finding himself in Britain, his desperation to please everyone, only to meet such a tragically cruel end.
Regarding people being ‘aware of the bad guys’, I do agree: but we’ve lost authority. The British people were once pro-active—obliged by law, no less, to arrest felons and ‘stop the commission of a felony’. A respectable person could once have gone up to a suspicious person in his street and friendlily inquired his business; if assaulted, he could expect half the street to turn out, yelling at least and generally creating a commotion to demand the attention of patrolling constables. Now, though: ‘British people are the least likely in Europe to be “have-a-go heroes” and get involved if they witness a crime …’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7592196.stm
It was also the job of the old-fashioned and lo-tech ‘beat bobbies’ to keep an eye out for anything odd, and an adult of working age loitering when respectable people were working could expect to be questioned (informally at first, to ascertain his attitude, e.g. ‘Morning, sir, and what are you up to today? …Well, yes, it could be against the law to stand in the street. Do you have a name, sir? No? Mind turning out your pockets? Not happy, ay? I think you better accompany me to the station, laddie…’).
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Still Scottish, Always British—Quis Separabit?
Georgie's death was very affecting for sure. Seeing him kicked out on the street with his coat and shoes taken was especially cruel. The sense of helplessness, rage and sad loneliness the young actor conveyed was quite impressive.
It is sad we don't want to get involved in this country anymore. One of these days we will have our own Kitty Genovese incident, if we haven't already.
I do have this movie please eMail me
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Romany