Steven Spielberg Presents Taken
DreamWorks Home Entertainment   -   2002   -   885 minutes

Reviewed by Kyle Crawford

Review Date: October 31, 2003

FOR STARTERS

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Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg who teamed up to make arguably the best miniseries of all time, Band Of Brothers, join forces again for another major television event. This time the subject matter is of alien abductions and concerns four generations of families between the 1940's and present day. Steven Spielberg Presents Taken is an amazing accomplishment from a team of directors and, features top-notch acting and better than average special effects (especially for television). Another advantage for the series is the taut, finely written script by Leslie Bohem and the smooth, genuine pacing. This series really seems to have a sense of purpose and direction, and does not disappoint.

Taken is an epic saga that weaves together the stories of three families over more than half a century beginning with the Roswell incident in 1947 and concluding in the present day. Featuring a talented cast of stars including Joel Gretsch, Julie Benz, Eric Close, Heather Donahue, Matt Frewer, Roger R. Cross and narrated by Dakota Fanning, Taken is a powerful and emotional tale of mankind's encounters with extraterrestrials.

Beginning with the abduction of Captain Russell Keys, a decorated World War Two pilot, the Keys family find themselves chosen to be 'taken' by aliens for generations. Russell unwittingly passes the legacy on to his son Jesse and then ultimately to his grandson Charlie - but what is it about this family that interests the aliens and keeps them coming back again and again? Meanwhile, intrigued by the discovery of the crash site in Roswell, Captain Owen Crawford begins his own family legacy - to solve the mystery behind alien existence. Crawford, however is a ruthlessly ambitious military man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants - even murder - and both his knowledge of the aliens and ruthless streak are passed on from generation to generation with shocking results.

The Clarkes are a tight-knit family led by Sally, a kind but lonely housewife who spends a night of passion with a handsome stranger, John. She rightly suspects that John is in fact the alien survivor of the Roswell spacecraft and does everything in her power to protect both her family and the mysterious John. Later, when she finds herself pregnant, she realises that her son Jacob is no ordinary child and in fact could hold the key to the future of the planet. All three families intertwine throughout the movie until the ultimate and astonishing conclusion in this gripping, action-packed and special effects laden epic.

VIDEO

One of the good things to come out of the advent of DVD is that many television shows and miniseries are now shot in anamorphic widescreen. Steven Spielberg Presents Taken is no exception. Presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1, the video is really quite good, especially for a television show. The color palette is accurately displayed and absolutely no compression artifacts are evident. It does show some heavy grain in some spots (night scenes in particular), but this isn't too much of a distraction. Black levels are okay, but are mostly muted instead of the deep abyss of a theatrical presentation. All-in-all a very good video presentation from the folks at DreamWorks and considering the medium is is a television series, darn near great.

AUDIO

As good as the video is, the audio is even better. Steven Spielberg Presents Taken is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, and presented well. The dialogue is centrally focused and has good clarity. There is very good spatial separation across the front soundstage and significant, yet not gimmicky, action to the left and right of the listener. The surround channels are also used well with ambient noise and the well done music soundtrack. The subwoofer gets a nice workout of it's own and balances the low frequency effects quite nicely with the rest of the audio. Overall, an excellent audio track. Also included is a French 5.1 surround track.

SUPPLEMENTS

Steven Spielberg Presents Taken has only a handful of supplements included on a sixth disc. They are basically just five different featurettes running about a total of 39 minutes. Something interesting to note is that the region 2 release of this title which came out on May 5th, 2003 consisted of one documentary called "Inside Taken" and had a running time of 42 minutes. That being the case, it appears the producers of this release cut that longer featurette into pieces to give the appearance of a fuller supplemental package. Ah well, in any case these are pretty straight-forward behind-the-scenes looks at the miniseries and will hold a definite interest for big-time fans of the show. The featurettes are "Inside Taken" (17:23), "The Cast Of Taken" (4:53), "A New Reality" (7:47), "A Singular Vision: The Directors" (4:23) and "Time Warp" (4:32). The best of the lot is probably "Inside Taken", as it provides a larger overview of the miniseries as a whole. Definitely not a bounty of special features.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A great miniseries bolstered by a very good video and top-notch audio presentation has made it's way to DVD. While the special features may disappoint some die-hard fans, the overall package is a definite winner. Those of you who missed the television run of Steven Spielberg Presents Taken should, at the very least, make this a rental because this show will take you where no viewer has gone before.