Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, an ex-government employee where he worked as a self-described “preventer”, which can only be understood as a trained assassin of sorts based on the skills on display in Taken. Bryan’s life is in shambles as he dedicated his early years to his career and lost touch with his daughter and divorced his wife. However, he is trying to pick up the pieces and reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) who now lives with her mother (Famke Janssen) and sugar daddy step-father getting spoiled at every turn and she acts it. In fact the most interesting performance in the film comes from Grace — who was 24-years-old when the film was shot — and she may be the most convincing dimwitted spoiled brat I have ever seen in a movie. Seriously, this character may have one or two working brain cells based on her bouncy and bubbly persona. It’s annoying, but convincing.
Alternatively, the most unconvincing and contrived portion of the film comes as screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen apparently couldn’t figure out an easier way to get two young girls kidnapped so Kim’s overprotective father can come save them. In fact Bryan is so overprotective it’s a wonder he didn’t secretly inject a GPS tracker in his daughter as he folds under pressure to allow her to go to France with her girlfriend to follow U2 on their European tour. And wouldn’t you know it, after only a matter of minutes in the airport they are marked by an Albanian human trafficking and prostitution ring and these two American girls are ripe for the taking.
Fortunately when Kim and her friend are taken she happens to be on her cell phone with daddy who hops a plane to France to track down the bad guys and save his daughter. Despite the workabout intro, it is here the film becomes rather entertaining even if the bad guys still act like stereotypical bad guys while Neeson’s character is allowed to rise above convention and do a serious bit of killing. If you have ever watched a movie and asked yourself, “Why doesn’t he just kill him?” this movie will take care of that and Neeson even delivers a slug or two when you least expect it.
This isn’t to say this film is particularly good as much as it satisfies about 60 of the 94 minutes it takes to watch it. It contains a few unconventional ways about avoiding the action film stereotype with some satisfying kills, but the way the film wastes so much time getting the two girls into such a convenient kidnapping situation is unfortunate. On top of that, while Neeson is going around killing everyone — much to the audience’s satisfaction — the bad guys are still acting like usual bad guys. These bad guys are cupcakes compared to Neeson and while I know it is the typical movie scenario to allow for at least one scene where the bad guy and good guy chat it out, the fact the bad guys would actually catch the good guy, interrogate him and then hesitate to kill him is just stupid, especially considering the guy we are talking about has been running all over France killing anyone that gets in his way.
The best way to describe Taken is to say it is in the same genre as other recent Fox flicks such as Hitman and Max Payne, but it does it all much, much better. You can’t come out of Taken disappointed, in fact you should come out pleasantly surprised and equally satisfied, but this film still remains just a slightly above average feature, but I believe that is actually saying a lot.
