Decent action thriller.

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2011)

Taken starts in Los Angeles where former hardened spy Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) attends his daughter Kim's (Maggie Grace) seventeenth birthday party, separated from Kim's mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) he tries to stay close to Kim & involved in her life. Kim ask's her father to sign documents that will allow her to travel alone with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) to Paris & throughout Europe, at first Bryan is hesitant to sign the papers but finally agrees. Once in Paris the two girls are kidnapped by Albanian gangsters who specialise in prostitution & the slave trade, Bryan manages to fly to Paris & uses his contacts to obtain the information he needs & sets about finding his daughter Kim & saving from a life of drugged up prostitution & dishing out a little revenge on the way...
This American, English & French co-production was directed Pierre Morel & is a very gritty action thriller that is almost great but not quite, while it has some good action scenes & a solid plot I thought it lacked a little something & I ended up wanting a bit more. The script takes itself very seriously & the overall film has a gritty feel, there's no one-liners or messing around here when Bryan goes in he goes in hard & fast with no messing. The central concept is ever so slightly racist as the idea that Europe is dangerous & your liable to get kidnapped & sold into prostitution is a little overplayed, the other central theme of the unity of the family & that nothing else matters is rather broad. The bad guy's keep changing, from a guy at an airport to Alabanian pimps to mega rich oil sheiks, Bryan brings them all down in the end though. At about 90 minutes in length Taken moves along at a decent pace & there's enough shoot-outs, fights & action to keep one entertained but I didn't find any of it particularly memorable. The character's are alright but I found the coldness of Bryan played by Liam Neeson distracting & I didn't like it at all, even the other character's are a little thin.
Available in an Uncut Internationa version & an edited US theatrical edition there's a couple of minutes of difference between the two but nothing that noticeable. The action scenes are good, they are swift & fairly brutal without any prolonged fights or shoot-outs, if Bryan wants to kill someone he just kills them. There's a decent car chase through a building site too.
With a supposed budget of about $25,000,000 this ended up being a big box-office just about everywhere it was released, filmed in Paris & Los Angeles. The acting is OK, as I said I didn't like Neeson's cold performance at all though. Australian pop singer Holly Valance turns up as a pop singer.
Taken is a solid action thriller with a tough gritty edge, I can't say it's particularly original but is good for what it is. Action fans should like it & definitely worth a watch.