Great action movie, fairly realistic

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2009)

The movie has some bad points - somewhat cartoonish characters and plot, speaking English when one should've been speaking French, etc.
However, it's still awesome. It's an action movie, and I usually look for two things there: good action, and a believable explanation as to why it's happening. Both Bourne and Bond movies fail in those respects, whereas Taken is successful.
I didn't see anything superhuman about the protagonist, yeah he's good at shooting, hand-to-hand and driving but that's it. He took a lot of risks (notably when his car gets shot up with an automatic .308, that could've penetrated enough to kill him), but there's nothing impossible about what he's doing.
A lot of people mention racial stereotypes - come on. The movie is set in France, which nationality do you want the corrupt cops to be? Brazilian? And yeah it's horrible how movie portraits the Albanian mafia, I mean they've only been dominating drug&slave trade in Paris for the last ten years or so and people already start showing it in movies.
So yes Taken could've been less cliché as far as the story goes, but that story is superbly presented