Ooh baby baby it's a (cough) racist world

Rating: 2/10 (24 February 2010)

Don't get taken in by Taken. Sure, it's 7.9 on IMDb and with Liam Neeson in it you may figure it's going to be a cut above. You'd be wrong. It's the kind of film Mel Gibson would turn his nose up at.
For a start, it's very broadly written. Neeson plays a dad estranged from his ex-wife - Famke Janssen, who played a wonderful femme fetale in GoldenEye all those years ago, and is now content to play a Desperate Housewives-style mom.. The dialogue is all, "I really missed you Dad!" "I missed you too pumpkin!" Rubbish exposition: Neeson meets his old mates, they reminisce about how they went to Beirut on a mission, how he cried off with no warning to attend his daughter's birthday. Clumsily signposting his past life as an action hero, along with his dedication to his daughter. Though one also might also think, this guy is pretty unreliable, he might be a bit soft in the head to desert his mates.
And it's that which kept me watching, the thought there might be a subtext going on here, that Neeson might be a bit simple. Later, Neeson and his mates are security for a rock princess; Neeson asks her for career advice for his daughter JUST AS SHE'S ABOUT TO SWEEP ONTO STAGE! Media types never like to dish out free advice to wannabe competitors at the best of times. What kind of response is he likely to get? He seems a bit retarded, likewise his paranoid fears about his daughter going to Paris. But no, we're meant to admire him.
It gets worse, and you begin to suspect it's a metaphor for US foreign policy. I can only imagine those giving this a high rating are Americans loving the double whammy of the French and the Arabs getting a kicking. And incidentally, you really don't get to see much of Paris either, if you were looking to rent it for that reason.