Rollicking good movie but I will pick some nits

Rating: 9/10 (18 May 2009)

Go to the cinema or get the DVD and see the movie. If you like action packed thrillers this movie is for you. As another reviewer said, it will be the fastest 93 minutes you have had in a long while. I loved every minute of it.
Like most great movies, the plot is clean and spare. The bad guys have messed with the wrong girl. Daddy loves his little girl, he is coming to get her, and too bad for anybody (including former friends) who stand in the way. That said, I want to pick some nits.
First, so far as I know Liam Neeson is a nice guy who loves his family, is kind to animals, works hard, and deserves whatever success he can get. I am glad "Taken" is a winner for him. But the movie offers a couple of scenes where a really good actor could have delivered an Oscar-winning performance, and Neeson does not measure up.
For instance, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is a man who knows the world and the evils it contains. When he hears on the phone his little girl screaming as she is being brutally kidnapped into sex slavery (NB: this is really not a spoiler since this scene is in all the trailers), Neeson could have shown us something more than a dead-pan face that passes for steely resolve. Where was the horror? The pain? The anguish?
Another scene is when Mills discovers the brothel full of kidnapped girls. They are innocent things, just like his own daughter, imprisoned by thugs and drugs and practically sold by the pound like so much meat. Yes, Mills is on a mission to rescue his own daughter, but does he not have an ounce of sympathy for these forsaken girls who are the daughters of other fathers and mothers? It is true that he kills a number of the Albanian sex slavers, but it is not at all clear that he is doing it out of sympathy for these other girls or only because they are slowing him down in his mission to rescue his own daughter. As I said, I think Neeson could have done more, and it would have been much the better for him and for the movie.
My second nit is language. One mark of a really great movie is when the English speak English, the French speak French, the Germans speak German, etc. In a couple of scenes, had Neeson spoken in French, I think the movie would have really sparkled. Too bad about that.
Finally, there is Maggie Grace who plays the daughter, Kim. She is a beautiful woman and I wish her only success, but not for a moment did I believe she was 17 yrs old (which she is not). From Paris to Hollywood, Pierre Morel could not find an actress who looks 17? Really? To me this is an inexplicable casting error. Maybe Morel used the same guy who cast Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, so this is not the only such mistake, but damn! Talk about unforced errors.
But for these unforced errors, I think "Taken" could have been Oscar winning material. We will just have to settle for a rollicking good movie.