They take his daughter. He starts taking lives.

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2010)

"Taken" revolves around a retired spy whose daughter is kidnapped by a human trafficking ring in Paris. Naturally, he hops the first plane to Paris in order to dole out some serious ass-kicking.
The plot may be pretty contrived but that sort of deficiency probably won't make much difference to the kind of viewer that this film is aimed at. As a revenge flick promising an abundance of action the film delivers on that promise, though seasoned viewers have probably seen this sort of thing countless times already.
Liam Neeson is pretty good here and handles the role better than I would have expected. There's not really anything awards-worthy in his performance but that's mainly due to being limited by the material. Other than Neeson, only Famke Janssen really stands out.
Pierre Morel's direction is in the current action flick mold and is solid as far as that goes. Gratuitous cutting doesn't detract from the flick, except in the case of one chase scene. The score is decent enough but unremarkable.
When it comes down to it, "Taken" is the sort of action movie that does its job well but takes no chances. The film's high rating (7.9 at the time of this writing) suggests that there might be more to it but that isn't the case as far as I'm concerned. Nevertheless, I'm sure that action fans will eat it up.