Ludicrous

Rating: 3/10 (17 July 2009)

An absurd premise from the get-go - that travel to Europe is horrendously dangerous for pretty young American girls due to the unstoppable tactics of rampant white slavers. And we're specifically told that the eastern Euro. bad guys have switched from securing their "product" by luring pretty residents of the former Soviet bloc to jobs that don't exist, instead looking to "slash transportation expenses" by just grabbing girls as they arrive at Heathrow airport.
Natalie Holloway, anyone? What happens when just one pretty, American girl disappears during foreign travel? We're supposed to believe the hue and cry from press around the world wouldn't offset the cost of a car trip from Moldova? I didn't buy Liam Neeson as the girl's father for an instant, and exposition is rarely as clumsy as is seen in "Taken," with Neeson's former colleagues showing up to grill some beef and replay the good old days in Beirut, battling those stuffed shirts "back at Langley."
The conveniences amass quickly, from the rich step-dad who can conveniently fly Neeson to the scene, and from there with Neeson never taking a step that doesn't lead him directly to exactly the bad guys responsible for his supposed daughter's disappearance, and even to the very same locations she'd traveled through just hours before.
Oh, and if you see a car chase taking place anywhere in the proximity of a bulldozer, its shovel blade menacingly close as the vehicles whip nearby, just what do YOU suppose will eventually happen to one of the bad guys. Fortunately, when he cleverly plants a bug on one of those bad guys, seconds later the guy is talking to his henchman about the missing girl's location. When Neeson character gets home, he should by a Powerball lottery ticket, because his good luck never falters! The "action" kicks off with Neeson confronting a mysterious knife-wielding attacker pursuing an internationally known singing star.
What a lucky thing for the attacker that a security slip-up allowed adoring crowds to flood backstage post-concert, and that fleeing them happened to take the mega-star running past the very spot where the dangerous man waited with his glinting knife blade. Neeson's handling of this situation is the final piece to the puzzle that tells us he's every bit as sharp as he was back when he led an elite CIA team.
The film is competently, sometimes even prettily shot. But the story stretched the bounds of credibility far beyond reason. It does not ask for a suspension of belief - it requires dim-witted stupidity. And while Neeson appears up to - and perhaps even relishes the action aspects of a Bruce Willis role: vindictive, no-holds-barred CIA killer/Dad, the script's efforts to set him up as such is amateurish in the extreme.
Finally, as alluded to earlier, while the first 15 minutes show us Neeson gazing with a smile at family photos of his daughter, nothing in his performance with the young lady herself (other than the TV-caliber dialogue) leads us to suspect they've even met before. Yeah, she hugs him a lot and says, "Oh, Daddy!" But I never bought it.