“Taken” Review

“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 that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. If you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

I wish I had a special set of skills that would send shivers down the spines of bad guys.  It must be nice to be able to walk into a den of muscular thugs knowing that you can take them all down with the speed of Jason Bourne and the ease of James Bond.  That is essentially what Brian Mills (Neeson) must do to retrieve his 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Grace), after she is abducted by the notorious Albanian sex slave traders during her vacation in Paris.

The film’s opening scenes tell us that Mills is an ex-government agent, a “preventer” he calls himself when explaining his past.  He prevented bad things from happening.  He has an infinite attention to details.  He is devoted to his daughter, who lives with his ex wife and her new, extremely wealthy husband.

When Kim takes a trip to Paris with her best friend, Amanda, she makes the mistake of befriending the wrong man — a man who immediately calls his nefarious employers and makes them aware of the girls’ location.

While hiding from the abductors, Kim speaks with her father, allowing him to gain vital clues to the kidnappers’ identities and whereabouts.  And so, with the French authorities claiming Mills has less than 96 hours to find her, the hunt begins.

Now, “Taken” has many things going for it… First and foremost, the premise, despite some familiar notes, is irresistibly riveting.  The plot may be simple, but it is packed with inherent tension.  Also, the performances in the lead roles are emotionally charged.  Neeson is terrific as the coldly determined father.  Grace bounces with ease from blissfully naive to intensely terrified.

I was also tremendously aware of the desaturated palette used by director, Pierre Morel.  It is a nice touch that highlights the seedy underbelly of the typically romanticized French capital.

Unfortunately, “Taken” has too many flaws to rank as a must-see movie.  Some of the action gets repetitive.  How many times can you watch Liam Neeson win a fist fight?

Some of the supporting performances are weak too.  Famke Janssen isn’t given much to do, but she doesn’t do anything significant with her character in the limited screen time she has.  The bad guys are also very two dimensional and dwindle into clichéd caricatures on too many occasions.

Nevertheless, “Taken” deserves to be seen.  It is a taut thriller that, despite playing predominantly by the numbers, manages to elicit nail-biting excitement and genuine tension.  It feels a little like a combination of Harrison Ford’s 1988 film, “Frantic” and Val Kilmer’s 2004 film, “Spartan”.  If you enjoyed both of those movies, then this is definitely for you.