Bullet Points: Taken Alive
There are two men most associated with the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron… Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. But Lou and Arnie weren’t the only bodybuilders featured in Pumping Iron that would go on to have an acting career… there was another and his name is Franco Columbu.
Franco had small parts in three of his buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biggest movies of the 80’s, Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator and The Running Man. But in the 90’s, Franco had the opportunity to be the star of the show in movies like Beretta’s Island and the subject of this review, 1995’s Taken Alive.
- The Premise: Robert Boyd (Robert Ginty, The Exterminator) is a United States Senator with Presidential aspirations. While on a diplomatic trip to Sardinia, Boyd becomes the target of a radical group that is looking to kidnap the Presidential hopeful and hold him for a hefty ransom… things don’t go exactly as planned and the radicals led by a guy named Marty Moretti (Frank Stallone, Terror in Beverly Hills) end up with the Senator’s mistress Angela (Frankie Thorn, Bad Blood) instead. The married Senator Boyd does not need it getting out that his mistress is being held for ransom so he calls one of his contacts in the intelligence community and they send out one of their top agents to rescue Angela.
- Mistaken Identity: Barbara Niven of Hired to Kill fame plays Veronica, the agent assigned to the rescue mission. Veronica is not expected to complete this mission alone, she briefly meets with Senator Boyd at that airport and she is given a matchbook with the name of her Sardinian contact on it… or so she thought. Senator Boyd had met with local sculptor Enrico Costa (Franco Columbu) earlier in the day for a photo opp and to commission Enrico to do some marble work for him back in Washington. The Senator took down Enrico’s contact info on a matchbook and it was that matchbook that he accidentally gave to Veronica. When Veronica meets Enrico she assumes he is an agent of some sort. The good hearted Enrico sees a woman in need asking for his help so he just rolls with it. If that is not the recipe for a madcap action adventure, I am not sure what is.
- Complaint Department: There was one thing that really irked me about Taken Alive and that is the way Veronica reacted to the hardships she faced on her mission… she came across like she was a city slicker like Katleen Turner’s character in Romancing the Stone more than a highly skilled agent of the United States government, you know the type of agent you’d assign to a highly sensitive mission like this one. Having to sleep in a cave or having to eat what could be found in the wild seems like something that would be covered in Survival Training 101… instead she is talking about getting to her hotel where she could take a hot shower and eat a hot meal.
- It Doesn’t Matter: By the time Veronica and Enrico track down Angela, Angela has fallen in love with her captor Marty and really has no desire to go back to Senator Boyd. This interesting turn of events guaranteed the movie was going to get a happy ending, but it also made it feel like all of the conflict between our heroes, Veronica and Enrico, and Marty’s radicals leading up to the film’s finale didn’t really matter.
I do not believe there is a person on Earth that has seen Taken Alive and said “Boy, that Franco Columbu is one hell of an actor!” Acting skills aside, I couldn’t help but grow a soft spot for the big lug as I watched… his character’s intentions were pure. Enrico wasn’t helping Veronica because it was his job or there was some reward he had hoped to collect, Enrico helped Veronica because it was the right thing to do.
Ending a review with some Bonus Bullet Points is the right thing to do too…
- Familiar Face: Veronica’s boss is played by William Smith (Eye of the Tiger). Smith’s L.E. is a shrewd operator and cuts a deal with Ginty’s Robert Boyd. By the end of the movie L.E. is Boyd’s running mate in the Presidential Election.
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Franco Columbu use a foosball table as a weapon, then this is the movie for you.
- Suggestion Box: Taken Alive was actually suggested to me by @varangianvigilante, one of our followers on the official Bulletproof Action Instagram page. The suggestion is greatly appreciated as this was a movie that was nowhere near my radar.
- Endorsement Deal: The trailer for Taken Alive includes a ringing endorsement by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger!
