Taken (2008) **

Rating: 5/10 (10 January 2010)

Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA agent whose former career has made him all paranoid, especially when it comes to worrying about his 17-year-old daughter's well being. When daddy's little girl asks him to sign a consent form so she may travel to Paris with her scatterbrained girlfriend (they actually are lying and want to follow a rock band all around the map), it's with grave reservations that he eventually complies. Once the girls arrive at their destination, it's only mere minutes before dad's worst fears are confirmed, and they're "taken" by foreign bad guys, to be drugged and sold as sex slaves. It's theorized that Neeson has only 96 hours to find and rescue his daughter before she becomes completely untraceable. As a fan of James Bond, I understand that many spy and action movies require accepting a lot of things that just aren't realistic. That's the fun of these types of films. But the contrived ease and lightning speed with which Neeson is able to arrive at the precise locations and track down and identify the specific criminals here, just struck me as totally unbelievable and cliché. Liam's fun to watch, and he's got some pretty cool lines ready for his daughter's captors, but in addition to the by-the-numbers approach to the material, there's a lot of hand-held and shaky camera craziness to distract those viewers who dislike such an approach. Go watch HARDCORE (1979) with George C. Scott instead. ** out of ****