Taken (2009, PG-13)

Taken is a tense, action-packed movie.  How many of those have we seen?  Quite a few actually.  Therefore, there's not much new that Taken could offer.  So we get the same, usual ingredients that are in most action flicks: gunfights, shootouts, a high badguy body count, a determined hero, lots of fights involving: guns, knives and fists, as well as a car chase scene here and there.  The lead character even goes as far as to torture a bad guy by electrocuting him in a chair in one scene to get the information he needs, as well as to shoot another man's wife in front of him to get more information.

Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, essentially an older Jason Bourne/James Bond/Dirk Pitt who has retired from the CIA to spend time with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who is living with his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her new, ultra-rich husband.  Kim persuades her dad to let her go on a trip with a friend to France; Bryan reluctantly agrees, not knowing that she plans to go all over Europe following a U2 band tour, until she already leaves on the plane.

Bryan calls Kim when she lands in France at her apartment; she witnesses men abduct her friend, and she screams this to her dad before they abduct her as well.  Bryan returns to his special CIA secret agent skills and heads to Europe that night to rescue his daughter, whom he learns has been captured by Albanian slave traders.  And yes, Bryan is the guy who electrocutes a bad guy in the chair to death, and who shoots another man's wife in the arm to get more information.  Bryan spends his gunfights taking a bad guy's gun and using it until it runs dry and then taking another bad guy's gun and so on.  Bryan even takes a couple of gunshots and yet keeps fighting.  For me, that shows how far any ordinary dad is willing to go to save his daughter, especially one who is putting his CIA skills to the test.

Bryan must be a pretty smart guy to figure out how long it will take to rescue Kim before she disappears (96 hours), and the specific name of the Albanian leader who captured her.  Good thing he has his old CIA buddies to rely on.  And then I wonder, how did they figure all this out themselves?

Director Pierre Morel must have watched the Bourne movies and quite a few of the James Bonds before shooting this pic.  He pulls off some pretty sleek car chase scenes and shoot outs, all of which are well filmed, but aren't anything that we've seen before.

Neeson scores in his role.  Throughout the movie, we can always see what Bryan is going through.  We can see how determined and how far he alone is willing to go to save his kid.  That makes his character almost as believable as Jason Bourne.

Thankfully, Taken has about an only 90 minute running length--it's fast paced and not too long.  And that's a good thing.  Quite frankly, I don't think that Taken deserves a lot of the scorn that it received critically.  It raises some awareness about the slave trading stuff going on around the world, delivering that awareness in fast paced action thrills that doesn't let up for a good two-thirds of the movie.

Taken is not a 'must see' flick.  Even as an entertaining action film it doesn't rise up that particular level of prominence, even if it could be worth one, quick peek.  And for just a movie lasting only an hour and a half, you might be exhausted or at least quite pretty tired by the time the credits roll as well.

                        ***/5