If you want to watch this, have a lobotomy first...

Rating: 2/10 (12 July 2010)

Saw this last night and am amazed at the good reviews. You know when a plot is so implausible, the plot holes so glaring, that you're literally yelling 'BULLSH*T!' at the screen? I was doing that every thirty seconds.
First, this film is constructed completely from clichés. Ex secret agent tough guy (Liam Neeson) whose soft spot is his daughter? Check. Brittle ex wife who has left him for a generic rich guy? Check. Slutty blonde friend who leads angelic daughter astray? Check. Immigrant baddies running implausible white-slavery prostitution ring? Check. Double- crossing Frenchman with world's thickest french accent? Check. Arab baddies on a yacht? Check. If you're guessing that the father pulls through, the daughter ends up safe and still nauseatingly shallow, the baddies end up dead and the slutty blonde friend dies, yup, that's about it.
Still, it could have been good. Day 1 of 24 covers similar territory and is great. But it's not, it's terrible.
The whole set up of the abduction doesn't really make sense at all. Yes, sex trafficking exists, yes, it might be for prostitution, yes, there might even be Albanian mobsters in Paris involved in it. But why the hell would they abduct clearly rich, American girls for prostitution? American girls with family who will miss them and enough clout to make a fuss about it? More trouble than it's worth, easier to traffic Eastern Europeans. They go to all of the trouble to abduct these American girls and promptly kill off slutty blonde with an OD of drugs -yeah right, they'd be more careful with their investment. The French authorities turn a blind eye to missing Americans known to be abducted, again, I don't think so.
Given that the whole thing ends with a white slave auction where annoying daughter sells for $500,000 it would have made a lot more sense for Liam Neeson to just get rich step-dad to cough up that much, or even double that, offer them the money for ransom and save everyone a lot of trouble.
The action is trying to be Bourne-like in its roughness, but it's not good enough to pull it off. It's not clever. It's not believable because it's all a straight line, Neeson gets one clue from a guy, shoots him, and that clue always pans out, leads him to the next guy, who gives him one clue, then he shoots him, next clue pans out, etc. There are no surprises and no particularly good fights. This is not a great action movie. It's a bad action movie and an absolutely dire movie if you consider it as a whole.
Two stars purely for Neeson, who does the best he can with the two-dimensional characterisation.