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Taken: Can I take my money back?
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You might know Taken as the Liam Neeson movie where the girl gets dragged, kicking and screaming, from under the bed in the trailer. Chances are, that’s all you’ll ever remember about it. Bryan Mills (Neeson) is obsessively trying to get reacquainted with his 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Apparently, he was some sort of government operative and missed out on most of her childhood, much to the chagrin of his estranged wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen!?). Within 10 minutes, character building sheds dim light on what the plot is going to be: Kim wants to go to Paris with a friend; Mills eventually gives in even though his worldly ‘spy’dey senses are tingling; she’s going to be abducted; he’s going to track her abductors down in Paris and kill them. How do we know this? Because the movie poster actually has the line from the film in bold print: “I don’t know who you are but if you don’t let my daughter go I will find you I will kill you.” Ok…this isn’t going to be a mystery.
Actually, to the film’s credit, the plot moves fast. And the scene where Kim is abducted from an apartment in Paris is tight, convincing, and tense (after all, this is the director/writing team that brought us all three Transporter movies). However, this is the peak of the movie and it speedily careens downhill from here. After quickly and easily figuring out that Kim’s been taken by a highly motivated Albanian human trafficking ring, Mills turns the city of lights on its head, relying briefly on former French police contacts for help. Neeson is well suited to play a burly, yet lithe ass-kicker and makes Jason Bourne seem like a child in spy’s clothing. I almost believed he could single handedly take out an entire mob organization while running from French authorities (Paris loves its car chases). What I really couldn’t believe is when he’s suddenly, and easily, captured towards the end, only to escape on a technicality.
As far as acting in Taken goes, there was certainly some talent to work with, but director Pierre Morel dropped the ball. Maggie Grace (TV’s Lost) plays Kim with bubbly, annoying teen naïveté so thick I wanted her to be abducted. And when Famke Janssen (soooo hot as Jean Grey in the X-Men series) reappears at the end, I realized I had forgotten that she was even in the movie. Still, Neeson makes a better desperate father than he does a Jedi (I hate you, George Lucas), and, like in the movie, walks away from this pile up relatively unscathed.
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