I landed a review gig this week for the movie Taken. I was more excited about the opportunity for paying work and didn’t care much what movie it was. I hadn’t heard anything about the flick, and the basic premise of a man tracking down his abducted daughter didn’t sound all that appealing (predictable much?).
But as the credits rolled I cried.
This is the third time I remember crying in the movie theater (care to guess what other movies prompted waterworks?). I readily admit that I cry more easily since becoming a parent and I don’t see many movies in the theater, but it’s still a rare reaction.
It wasn’t so much the movie that moved me, but a simple realization. The movie is about an ex-CIA agent who tracks down the men who abducted his daughter in order to sell her in the slave trade. I realized that most victims of human trafficking don’t have Liam Neeson to go all CIA operative on their captors. They have nobody. There is no rescue filled with tears of joy. There is no happy reunion.
That is the reality of human trafficking. And it’s in your backyard: less than two years ago there was a human trafficking bust about a mile from my house.
If you want to do something about it, the International Justice Mission and One Voice to End Slavery are a good places to start.
I’ve been