A very well paced action movie cut into 93 minutes

Rating: 9/10 (28 February 2017)

Pierre Morel's "Taken" is an action movie that ranks among the best of it's generation despite the title sort of being predictable and giving the whole story away. The movie focuses on a retired CIA agent named Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) who has an ex-wife named Lenore (Famke Janssen) and a daughter named Kim (Maggie Grace). In the opening scene of this movie we see Mills go to his daughter's birthday party and is there only for a short time all he really does is get there give his daughter a present but not without confrontation from his ex-wife and he says hello to her new husband Casey (Jon Gries). Then the next day we see Bryan, Lenore, and Kim having lunch at a restaurant and Kim asks him if she can go to Paris, France with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy), at first he is reluctant but then after he is demanded to do it he gives in while still being reluctant to do it. Then we see Kim get kidnapped and once Bryan finds out about it he sets out to find who kidnapped her and send her back to her family and he will do anything to accomplish that which is what the tag-line of the movie happens to give away but I won't spoil it beyond here. In the movie Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, and Maggie Grace gave such good performances in the movie, but the only problem I had with it was that the movie could have had a better title in order to make it less of a predictable movie which made the film focus more on the plot elements than on the actual characters, but it was suspenseful in some aspects. This wasn't a great movie but it was good and entertaining but it also would have been better if it had Hitchcockian like plot elements added to it, but otherwise it worked as a short action movie.