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Prepare to get Taken for the ride of your life! “Liam Neeson is an unstoppable force” (Premiere) in this action-packed international thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. When his estranged teenage daughter (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped in Paris, a former spy (Neeson) sets out to find her at any cost. Relying on his special skills, he tracks down the ruthless gang that abducted her and launches a one-man war to bring them to justice and rescue his daughter.
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great action film Mar 17, 2010 Liam Neeson proves he can play the action hero as well s anyone in this action thriller.he plays the father of a 17year old who has been kidnapped while in Paris.with very little to go on,he races against time to find her kidnappers and save her.oh,and he has a very particular set of skills.in short,they messed with the wrong guy.what follows are some very intense fight scenes,which are very well choreographed.but this is not just an action movie.there are certainly some dramatic moments and the movie is tinged with sadness,as some of the events in the movie mirror reality.of course being a Hollywood movie,you pretty much know how it will end,although it didn't end completely the way i thought it would.all in all, a very entertaining movie,that also makes you think.for me,Taken is a 4/5
Well made action-fantasy flick Mar 16, 2010 "Taken" is a well made action flick and also a fantasy of revenge and redemption, starring Liam Neeson as retired CIA operative Bryan Mills. It's the kind of role that Harrison Ford might have done well with 10 or 15 years ago. Neeson is very good, but he doesn't have Ford's humor, and the script is mostly humorless, too.
Mills's ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen, Jean Grey in the X-Men franchise), is a lying and manipulative woman who dumped him ostensibly because Mills's CIA work kept him away from home, but she then managed to marry some very rich guy. Mills retired and lives in L.A. to be closer to their teen-aged daughter, Kim.
Mills gets his chance to prove his worth -- when everyone else seems worthless -- when Kim, on a trip to Paris with a girlfriend, Amanda, is kidnapped by an Albanian gang that abducts young, attractive Western women into prostitution and sexual slavery. As Mills tells the kidnappers on the telephone, "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."
Through the rest of the movie, Mills makes good on this promise.
Along the way, the flick shamelessly panders to American prejudices. I dunno; maybe other people share the same prejudices. The Albanian bad guys seem to be Muslims. The French may be civilized, but they are useless, unprincipled, and corrupt. The most repulsive bad guy is an old, rich, corpulent, lascivious Arab sheik. Another really bad guy is an American businessman. He tells Mills not to take things personally, because selling Kim to the highest bidder was just business. (Maybe this is supposed to sound like when a health insurance company cuts off coverage to one of its customers; that's just business, too. Nothing personal.) Mills doesn't reply but shoots the businessman dead. Mills doesn't negotiate or hesitate; he's a pure man of action. He tortures. He kills. He shows no mercy. In one key scene, a bad guy holds a knife to a hostage's throat. He starts to say, "We can nego--", but Mills shoots him in the head.
There's nothing erotic in this PG-13 flick, but there are strong sexual themes. Much is made of the fact that Kim is a virgin. Mills at first resists Kim's request for permission to go to Europe, which he sees as dangerous and corrupting. Mills eventually gives in to the lies and manipulations of his ex-wife, Lenore, but even before the kidnappers show up, we learn he was right. Kim's friend, Amanda, sees the trip as a sexual adventure for the two of them and nothing at all like the harmless trip to visit Paris museums that Kim and Lenore had described to Mills. This is not spelled out, but Lenore probably saw the trip the same way as did Amanda, as a chance for Kim gain sexual experience. After the kidnapping, Kim's virginity saves her. It makes her a valuable commodity to the kidnappers (unlike the experienced and hence disposable Amanda). At a subsequent auction of abducted women, Kim is presented as the last and most valuable because of her "certified purity." Mills's race to save Kim sometimes seems like a race to save her virginity as much as her life. Make of this what you will.
This movie should be watched after viewing 13 Tzameti and Hostel 1 Mar 14, 2010 The tension will be heightened if you watch Hostel 1 before watching this movie and 13 Tzameti informs the local color of the Parisian underbelly. This is an entertaining as well as useful cautionary tale. Watch it with your high school age children.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Enjoyable revenge romp Mar 03, 2010 The movie doesn't have a complicated plot or deep, dynamic characters. That said, it's quite a good watch for what it is. It's primarily a revenge thriller and it does that job quite well. The burning need for retribution is an extremely powerful force in the human psyche and this movie plays on that emotion quite effectively. It's not a movie that I want to keep, but I really enjoyed it for an evening watch.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Liam Neeson elevates what could have been pedestrian revenge flick Mar 02, 2010 Liam Neeson shares a trait that all great actors possess - they can do something completely ridiculous and remain entirely believable. If you're watching Patrick Stewart play Jean-Luc Picard on "Star Trek - Next Generation," you're watching an actual Star Fleet captain rather than a ham actor over-acting on a cheesy set. If you're watching Sigourney Weaver in "Alien," you're watching Ripley take on the universe's most dangerous monster rather than an actress dancing with a rubber suit. If you're watching Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada," you're watching an egotistical editor of a fashion magazine, not a drama queen emoting for effect.
From "Darkman" to "Star Wars" to "Taken," Neeson has always remained believable and compelling no matter how ridiculous his surroundings or god-awful the dialogue.
In "Taken," we have to believe that Bryan Mills (Neeson) is a lethal espionage/security guy, one of the best in the world, whose dedication to the job cost him his family. Too late, he realized his error and quit so he can live in unemployed drudgery and snatch a few moments here and there with his cherished daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Bryan's ex, Lenore (Famke Jannsen, in a thankless role), has custody of Kim and has remarried a sugar daddy who is actually a better person than Lenore. Kim desperately pleads with Bryan to let her go to Paris with her friend Amanda to tour museums. Bryan reluctantly consents, going against his better instincts that his 17-year old baby is going to a dangerous place and is not ready for it.
Unfortunately, Bryan is right - within minutes of landing in Paris, things go horribly, horribly wrong. If you saw the trailer for "Taken," you know that the movie is about Bryan's hunt for Kim across the Parisian underworld.
This is where "Taken" takes flight in a "Bourne Ultimatum" kind of way. There is virtually no character development - the question is whose arm Bryan will break (or worse) as he hunts for his daughter, and how efficiently he'll do it. Like Jason Bourne, Bryan Mills is not an acrobatic martial artist who will jump, twirl, and kick for dramatic effect - he'll rip your ears off and snap your legs with economic fury. He's not doing it to be cool. He's doing what he needs to do to get his daughter back.
Woe betide any man or woman who gets in his way. "Taken" strings together a preposterous chain of events that could never happen in a gazillion years, but you won't have time to figure that out until after the movie is over. For 90-odd minutes, you'll be taken on a compelling thrill ride, courtesy of Neeson and team.
Full disclosure - while this movie owes an obvious debt to the "Bourne" franchise as far as the feel and look of the film is concerned, it is considerably darker in both subject matter and tone. This is far from a feel-good movie - you get the sense there are no winners here.
based on 380 reviews
Enjoyable revenge romp Mar 03, 2010
