” I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
If Liam Neeson says he’ll find you and kill you, you’d best believe it. Here, he plays Bryan Mills an ex-government operative though it’s never revealed exactly what he did. Mills is now divorced, his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), has since remarried a much wealthier man. Lenore and daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), convince overprotective dad to allow her to take a summer trip to Paris with a friend. Mills reluctantly agrees with the caveat that she calls him everyday and keeps him constantly updated. Mom blasts her former hubby about smothering their precious little girl. Of course, dad’s worries are proven correct when Kim is abducted by human traffickers. As you can tell from the above quote, dad doesn’t take this lying down.
Taken comes from Luc Besson, director of La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and The Fifth Element. Besson has spent the last several years as a writer/producer on action flicks like the Transporter series. With Taken, he re-teams with Transporter co-writer, Robert Mark Kamen and director Pierre Morel who helmed another Besson project, District B-13. If you’ve seen any of those pictures, then you’ve got a good idea of what to expect from Taken with a light influence from the Bourne franchise. In fact, you could easily see Neeson’s Bryan Mills as what might have happened to an older Jason Bourne. Mills gets into plenty of shootouts, fist fights, and car chases throughout Europe while using a little ingenuity to get out of tough scrapes. He’s a stone cold, hardass too. When interrogating one bad guy, Mills doesn’t shoot him to get answers; he shoots the guy’s wife.
Taken is a rather predictable and clichéd affair, but it’s a fun action film. If the idea of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn dispatching criminals right and left appeals to you, then you’ll probably be taken by Taken.
Rating: ***
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