Scary, exciting action movie with family appeal

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2011)

Liam Neeson plays a retired secret agent who's divorced and has a daughter who lives with his ex-wife. Without going into spoilers, his daughter is kidnapped and we get to see Neeson hunt down the kidnappers and rescue his daughter.
I thought that one of the strong points of the movie was the realistic setting. The bad guys are new slavers in the world - slavery may have been banned in the U.S. long ago, but tell that to the girls who are trafficked and forced into prostitution. These criminals are real and exist in almost every country, and unfortunately society looks the other way.
Personifying the person who looks the other way is Jean-Claude, played by Olivier Rabourdin, who has a wife and two daughters whom he hugs while ignoring, and in fact aiding, the sex slavery of girls just like them.
Neeson gives a superb performance in the movie. He's a great actor who can comfortably act in dramas and action movies with equal ease.
My only gripe with the movie was that Mills (Neeson) was unnecessarily made to defeat all the bad guys by himself. As great as Neeson's acting was, that decision was unfortunate, considering the realistic setting of the movie. We were introduced to several other extremely skilled ex-secret agents in the beginning. Why couldn't they have joined Mills? Four of them against the traffickers would have been believable. The director could have gone the Action Movie route without sacrificing believability.