Someone does get Taken, Right?

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2009)

Overall I walked away from Taken with a feeling of satisfaction. The action was pleasing. It had its thrilling moments. And I always seem to be a sucker for watching Really Bad people get whats coming to them from someone operating outside society's rules. It turns out more clever than I thought it would be. If you like these things in a movie, check it out.
But beware. The road leading to this acceptable action romp paradise is one paved with Terrible writing, Campy dialog, and One-dimensional character development.
The first 45 minutes of this film are really hard to sit through. The film is called Taken. Just get to the Takin' already. The set-up is completely unnecessary and poorly, poorly executed. As an audience, we can just assume that a father would want his daughter back. We don't need the background drama that he never gets to spend time with her and has revolved EVERY ounce of his life to being in hers. The way this came across, by the way, left me feeling unclean and disturbed.
The point being there is no reason for a movie called Taken to be unbalanced like this. Everyone who bought a ticket knows exactly whats in store for them and the fun is not going to begin until we see some kidnappin' happen. They could have just as easily started the movie off with the abduction scene from the trailer and given everyone some more thrills. We know that a father is going to do what he can to get his daughter back.
Also this movie participated in a strange phenomenon I've been realizing recently. Film with a videocassette look. Scenes of the movie, particularly action scenes have a grainy distortion all over looking a lot like it would if I was watching it off of a VCR cassette that had already faithfully served me at repeatedly recording the Simpsons a few dozen times. Very distracting, and really why mess with the beautiful high definition picture of film?