brainless shoot em up

Rating: 5/10 (23 February 2009)

Bryan Mills is a former spy now working high profile security events. He's divorced and still tries to find time for his teenage daughter Kim. She wants to go to France for a holiday, he warns against it, because of how dangerous Europeans are? Eventually he gives in and allows her to go on condition she rings him every night. Off she goes and forgets to ring home, Bryan is worried, but eventually gets her on the phone, but while talking to her, she sees her roommate being kidnapped by masked men inside their apartment, thinking quickly Bryan tells her what to do, to describe everything she sees so that he can trace them if she is "taken" too. Sure enough they find her and Bryan tells the kidnappers over the phone that he is going to find them and kill them all. While watching this Luc Besson produced film, I couldn't help but think of that line from Pulp Fiction, "when you positively have to kill every last Motherf@cker in the room, " well get Bryan Mills, he'll do all the hard work for ya, for he keeps his word, he goes to Europe and does kill every last Motherf@cker. It's a similar theme to Besson's own film Leon, a deadly assassin killing everybody in sight, but Taken really is based on a very flimsy premise, having said that, it really does exactly what it says on the tin, the problem with that is the film is very linear, as he tracks down the kidnappers/white slave traders, each one is given short shrift, they're dead within seconds, we never get to know any of the bad guy's. Mills is never even in peril, there is no rematch with a bad guy, we only get to know them all very briefly. If you're into brainless shoot em up's you won't be disappointed with this, I enjoyed it myself on those levels to some extent, but it is still quite a poor film. Neeson does make for a great hero though.