User blog:X9 The Android/PE Proposal: Marko (Taken)

Hello guys! Today, here's my twentieth-one PE proposal, and it's about Marko, the main antagonist of Luc Besson's thrilling Taken film, the first installment of the Taken trilogy, starring Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, one of his most iconic roles.

WHO IS HE / WHAT HAS HE DONE?
In Taken, Marko is a member of an Albanian human trafficking ring settled on France that abducts innocent foreign women to sell them as sex slaves and prostitutes, even working with an auctioneer named Patrice Saint-Clair to sell those women who are virgins as they are very valuable on the black market. One day, after his henchman Peter tells him about two American women named Amanda and Kim whom he met, Marko and his men break into their apartment and kidnap both women, yet Kim leaves her phone turned on so her father, the CIA agent Bryan Mills, can hear her descriptions of Marko. Talking with Marko, Bryan warns him to let his daughter go or he will hunt him down and kill him to rescue her. Marko wishes him good luck on his search and hangs up the phone.

Much later in the film, Bryan goes to France and tracks down Marko and his lieutenants under the guise of a corrupt French police officer, lying to them that they must renew their extortion contract with the brothel. Believing Bryan's lie, the thugs prepare to pay Bryan up while Bryan tricks them into saying a few words and phrases until it's Marko's turn, recognizing his voice. Unleashing a fight, Bryan wounds Marko and kills his henchmen. Bryan then explores the house only to find that Kim isn't there and that Amanda is dead from an accidental drug overdose. Noe alone, Bryan straps Marko into a makeshift electric chair on the basement and tortures him until Marko assures him that he send Kim to Saint-Clair due being a valuable virgin. With all vital information now his, Bryan thanks Marko and leaves him to die a very painful death as payment for his actions.

Killing Marko turns up to be one of Bryan's biggest mistakes later on, as his father Murad Hoxha and some friends of his later track drown Bryan and his family in Taken 2. However, Bryan defeats them one by one and kills Murad after he refuses to let go his anger and his wishes to avenge Marko, putting an end to the Hoxha family's vendetta against him.

WHAT'S THE WORK?
Taken is a 2008 English-language French action thriller film directed by Luc Besson (known for making Hollywood's greatest action thrillers) and starring the legendary Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, a CIA agent who sets to rescue his daughter Kim from an Albanian human trafficking ring who sells foreign white women as sex slaves and prostitutes across France. It spawned two sequels: Taken 2 in 2012 and Taken 3 in 2014. A television series centered on Bryan's adventures during his first days at the CIA aired from 2017 to 2018.

MORAL EVENT HORIZON
Unlike the main antagonists of the following installments, Marko stands up as one of the most despicable and heinous due his actions against innocent women. A high-ranking member of the Albanian human trafficking ring on France, Marko abducts, drugs and sells foreign white women as sex slaves and prostitutes without any freudian excuse except just making a profit for it. Every PE villain must have crossed the Moral Event Horizon to be PE, and Marko definitely crosses it long before the film when he starts kidnapping women for his wicked business without caring about their families.

HEINOUS STANDARDS/MITIGATING FACTORS?
A ruthless sex slaver, Marko kidnaps foreign white women to sell them as prostitutes or sex slaves to make a profit. To do so, Marko employs Peter, a Frenchman, to befriend most tourist women on the airport to then call him and notify him where they are living. Marko later shows up at their houses and kidnaps them without showing any mercy. For him, women are objects and if they are virgins, that means they are valuable and are more money for him, even sending them to Patrice Saint-Clair so he can sell them to powerful men from the black market, who pay large sums for them. He hold no regard on the life of others, as demonstrated when he drugs Amanda, one of his victims, too much until he causes her to die from an overdose, but as usual, his victims mean nothing for him and Marko doesn't care for it.

When Bryan Mills, the father of Kimberly Mills, his latest victim, warns him to let go his daughter or otherwise he will track him down and kill him, rather than taking serious such threat, Marko mocks Bryan and sarcastically wishes him good luck, showing that Marko believes himself as better than the others and is quite arrogant, not used to be threatened on his job. Marko also believes that he can control the law when he pays up corrupt French policemen with extortion money so he can continue to make profit for his business, like maintaining brothels. However, when interrogated, Marko is really a coward, as demonstrated when he wasn't able to tell Bryan where Saint-Clair sold his victims, leading Bryan to leave him to die a painful yet well-deserved death.

You may say that Marko isn't truly evil as he had loved ones, including his father Murad, who becomes the main antagonist in the sequel. However, it's evident that as Marko is irredeemable evil, he didn't care for his family as much he didn't care for the families of his victims. Either way, his father shows no problems on the nature of Marko's businesses and was sure that Marko's siblings would go to avenge them if he was killed, which means that the Hoxha family wasn't better than him and were surely as evil like Marko.

VERDICT
Taking all of this into account, I would say yes about considering Marko to be approved as PE.