Pure Genius

Rating: 10/10 (8 November 2013)

Liam Neeson is one of my all time favorite actors. I have many of his movies, I would like to have them all. I even have Krull, which will be reviewed sometime in the future.
The actors in Taken are some of my favorites as well; Famke Jensen and Maggie Grace are just two of them. I thought the acting by these two and Neeson were phenomenal. Some of the best acting I have ever seen.
The script was awesome. The subject matter was pretty daring. The action itself was great. The only negative that I saw was when Liam Neeson was running. But I can't fault him too much, I don't run well either. But enough of that.
I give Taken 10 stars out of 10. From start to finish Taken is just a great movie.
Liking this movie as much as I did I have a hard time picking three of my favorites scenes. But The three that pop into my mind right now are some of the best of the movie.
The first scene is a difficult scene to watch. It's the scene where Amanda (Katie Cassidy) and Kim (Maggie Grace) are kidnapped from Amanda's cousin's apartment in Paris. Kim is talking on the phone with her father, Brian Mills (Liam Neeson). She sees through a window that a couple of guys have grabbed Amanda and she relays this to Brian. Brian tells Kim to go to the next room and hide under the bed. Brian talks to Kim calmly and explains what is going to happen and what he wants her to do. Kim is taken, but as she is being taken from the room she yells out things she sees. When everything is quiet Brian hears someone pick up the cell phone and hears breathing. Brian explains "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for, I will find you, and I will kill you." The response is "Good Luck"
What a great scene. Even if it was difficult to watch.
The next scene I like is when Brian finds out where the girls were taken to in order to get them hooked on drugs and turned into prostitutes. He enters the house on the pretense that he is part of the local police force and he is now in charge of collecting the "shake-down" money for not putting a stop to illegal activities. At the end of the conversation Brian asks the five men in the room to translate a phrase he has on a piece of paper, it's in Albanian. The phrase is translated and said out loud by one of the men, who says "Good Luck." At that moment, Brian realizes that that man was the one he talked to on the cell phone that his daughter had. That is when he takes those five men out, along with all the other members of the gang that are in the house. Unfortunately, Brian finds Amanda in one of the upstairs rooms... dead from an apparent drug overdose. Then he finds one of the men alive and tortures him by strapping him to a metal chair and hooking up what looks like jumper cables to the light switch and turns it on. When Brian gets the information he wants, he turns the switch on and leaves it on walking out of the house.
Awesome sequence of scenes. It shows that a father will do almost anything to find and protect his children. That being said, the sequence of scenes that lead to Brian rescuing his daughter says that he will do everything possible to save Kim. That is an awesome sequence.
Brian Finds out that his daughter is going to be sold because she is a virgin. He finds out through a man he thought he was a friend that the man he needs is St-Clair and where to find him. Brian enters St-Clair's house and finds the auction rooms in the basement. He gets one of the buys to buy his daughter in order to save her. But Brian gets captured and sentenced to death by St-Clair. Brian escapes and kills St-Clair. He then follows after Kim and her "owners" in order to rescue her. He kills everyone on board the boat his daughter has been taken aboard. When he finds Kim she is being held at knife point by Sheik Raman (Nabil Massad). Raman attempts to negotiate, but Brian is in no mood to negotiate, so he puts a bullet through his forehead.
There are other scenes I could have talked about. Like when Lenore (Famke Jensen) tries to browbeat Brian into signing the permission form for Kim to go to Paris because she is under 18. Or the scene when Brian goes to his so called friend, Jean-Claude (Olivier Rabourdin), in Paris by going to his apartment and shoots Jean-Claude's wife... in the arm. Or I could have described the scene where Brian saves Sheerah (Holly Valance) from some crazed fan who attempts to stab her after a concert.
Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen wrote one hell of a great movie. And Director Pierre Morel did a phenomenal job creating one of my favorite movies.