For Paunchy Fathers Everywhere...

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 2009)

This is one of those films you enjoy even though you know it's slick and glossy and totally dumb. It contains nothing original, has trite dialogue, an indefensibly heavy dependence on coincidence and luck, narrative signposts that a visually impaired simpleton wearing a blindfold could read in the middle of a blackout, and super-heroic antics from an ageing leading man that in reality would have him reaching for a comfy chair for a sit down within five minutes of the chase beginning. And yet the film's action sequences are so well-staged that they somehow manage to hold it all together and stop you from reaching for the stop button on your remote.
Liam Neeson plays a prematurely retired government agent. He's one of those amiable but secretive men who never tell their family what it is that he really does, choosing instead to lend himself an air of mystery by explaining that he was a 'preventer,' i.e. someone who prevented bad things from happening. He tells this to his virginal teen daughter which is when you first suspect that the writer isn't just aiming for the usual 17-24 demographic here but is also reaching out to every pot-bellied, slouch-shouldered, balding middle-aged dad who has seen their life pass them by but who console themselves with the fact that they've at least raised some reasonably decent kids (even though they feel totally alienated from them and probably don't know where they are or what they're doing 85% of the time).
Anyway, against his better judgment, Liam allows his daughter to go on a holiday to Paris with her best friend and, wouldn't you know it, they go and get themselves kidnapped by a gang of Albanians. Typical. You let them out of your sight for five minutes. At least that's one good thing about the dispensing of barriers in Europe: us Brits, so long the villainous figure of Hollywood flicks, have now been usurped by the East European.
Neeson calls on his security pals for help and, using only a few seconds of taped conversation, a small piece of string and an empty Fairy Liquid bottle, they are able to identify not only the ring leader of the gang but where he used to live. Personally, I'd have shelled out for mates like that to come with me to Paris, but Liam's made of sterner stuff and flies out on his own. And within something like two-and-a-half minutes of arriving in Paris he's on the trail of the young dude who groomed the girls for abduction.
OK, so this film isn't really to be taken seriously, even though it doesn't really seem to have much of a sense of humour about itself. Like most films of this genre, if there is any obstacle to the logic or progression of the story it is either ignored completely or summarily dispensed with through the use of a throwaway line. That's why nobody thinks to tell the parents of the second girl that their little precious has just become a statistic in the human trafficking/sexual slavery figures. And it's why nobody in Paris has noticed that lithe young female tourists to the city are regularly disappearing within hours of getting off their planes. It's why Neeson has no trouble making himself understood in a foreign country, and why every Albanian gangster in Paris has an excellent grasp and command of the English language. It's why Neeson can identify his daughter's spotter through a hazy reflection of him taking her photograph on her mobile phone. And it's why a drunken and drugged girl can remember the name of the street in which she was imprisoned as her captors turn her into a junkie ready to turn onto the streets.
And the reason I highlight all these weaknesses, inconsistencies and flaws of the film isn't so much to damn it as to emphasise how surprising it is that I managed to enjoy so much of what was going on. The action scenes are the kind of highly-charged, adrenaline-pumping set-pieces that sometimes have you forgetting to breath, and the makers are canny enough to know that this is where the real strength of the film lies. Because when you strip the story down to its bare essentials – innocent young heroine plucked from the warmth and security of her family to become the plaything of a wealthy but villainous sheik – you're talking about a plot that was old in the 1920s. And Liam Neeson's hair-raising escapades and last-minute escapes are straight out of those old boys-own serials of the 30s.