If you ignore the "message" and accept it as a derivative Bourne then it is actually a solid thriller

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2008)

Having hardly seen his wife (now ex) and daughter for the last decade or so due to his work, Bryan is now a former special agent who has taken his retirement early in order to move close to where his estranged family now live. Despite his better judgement, he gives consent for his 17 year-old daughter to go to Paris with a friend. However all his "paranoia" is justified when his daughter calls him during an abduction by some unknown men. Using his contacts, Bryan learns of an Albanian group specialising in kidnapping travelling young women into sex slavery and estimates he has 96 hours maximum before she is drugged beyond redemption and sold into prostitution. Calling on a lifetime of skills, Bryan goes to Paris to track down those responsible and find his daughter.
I have not heard or read any reviews for this film when I went to see it but I imagine that many of them will have called this film a cross between Death Wish and the Bourne films because that is what it happens to play like. The Death Wise side of it makes it a little harder to enjoy but the Bourne side makes it worth seeing. The thin plot is where we have the Death Wise material as the nice retired man who loves his daughter turns out to have been correct that the world is a hideous place outside of the US whenever his daughter gets kidnapped. With hours before she is transformed into a junkie and working for her hits, Joe goes to a Paris where it appears that the Louvre is the only building NOT fully of young women trafficked into sex (and we never seen that so I have no proof). Fortunately, rash violence will save the day. OK so politically this is not the most pleasant pieces of work to be watching but, aside from the first twenty minutes of setup (some of which I could have done without) the plot doesn't really matter and it becomes a race against time thriller.
This is where it does owe a great debt to Bourne because the filming style, the action, the urgency and the fighting style are all very similar to the formulae used to good effect in that trilogy. The camera never sits still, the editing is fast and the sound-effects produce an audience reaction themselves. Of course it is very much derivative of Bourne and not up to that high standard but it does still make for an engagingly violent thriller. When it stops moving even for a second, it sags and it doesn't seem to know how to link the scenes (so many actions scenes fade to black and then into a slower scene setting up the next sequence) but mostly it keeps the pace high and keeps moving. This does not make it a great film though, and it is quite a cynical affair in some regards however it is hard to fault it when it delivers such solid thrills as its main function.
Of some surprise to me was to see how effective Neeson was in the lead. Channelling some of his crazed performance from Darkman, he is a tremendous force ripping through criminals and surprisingly convincing in the action scenes with fluid and natural motions (helped by very good editing as well). The rest of the cast don't matter so much but Janssen, Berkeley and Vallance are all odd finds in smaller roles while Grace does her bit in regards being a thoughtless teenager and then "in peril". Morel's direction is effective even if it is easy to imagine that he has lots of Paul Greengrass films at home and had been studying them pretty closely.
Taken is not a brilliant film but if you accept it for what it is then it is an effective thriller driven by brutal (but not gory) violence which is justified by the family heart of the plot, much like Death Wish did. It is best to ignore the "message" within all this and just leave your brain off to enjoy the action which, while not Bourne level, is still effective and enjoyable.