Man on Fire vs Bourne

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2009)

Looked up the rating at IMDb just before seeing this movie and i was pretty much surprised by the 8.0 I was seeing om my screen. For some reason I never heard before of this movie, so I did not have any expectations or whatsoever.
And what pleasant surprise this movie was! The storyline, which reminded me of Man on Fire, is all about Bryan Mill's daughter being kidnapped in Paris and him getting her back. The kidnap turns out to be a bad move for the kidnapper, because Bryan Mills used to be "spy" or something like that in the old days, and still has some skills up his sleeve. By the way, the fact you don't exactly are told what he used to be is a good example of how the characters in this movie are kept flat, which for a change is a good thing. Apart from some less meaningful scenes about divorced parents and the resulting mother-father-child relations, you will not find any distracting personal blabla in this movie. Heck, you even better could watch the latest James Bond if you want that.
Just as in Man on Fire, this action movie does not make any concessions. It is very right up your face. For example, when Bryan quite brutally interrogates an Albanian partner of the kidnappers, he tortures him by electrifying him. When he gets his answers he does not just walk away, no he walks away while switching the power back on again. Another method, but quite comparative to the situation in Man on Fire where Denzel Washington puts a bomb in the bad guy's ass, gets his answers, and still lets the bomb explode. However, where Man on Fire was just "raw", the action scenes in Taken are much more polished, and that is exactly where the comparison with the Bourne movies comes in. The hand to hand combat scenes are, just as in the Bourne movies, very fast and technical and filmed in the same way. The same goes for the scar chase scenes.
Raw action movies like these are quite rare, which in my opinion is a shame. Taken is not a brilliant movie, therefore it is to short and to simple, but on the other hand both the simplicity and shortness make the movie such a rush. In my opinion a well deserved 8!