If you haven't seen this movie yet, SEE IT NOW.

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2011)

I'd heard about this flick for a while from various friends but I'm usually about two years behind seeing movies. Finally rented TAKEN on Zune and-- WOW.
Great premise, great build-up to even greater action, and filled with those set-piece character moments that just make you want to bark HELLYEAH! sitting there in your chair. Who would've known Neeson could pull off someone like this. I mean, I've always regarded him as one of the premier actors of this entire generation, but even though he's nearing (in age) the end of the generation he comes from, he sure pulled it off as someone deadly, cunning, and smart.
The best part was he's not a brainwashed super-weapon like Bourne, and doesn't dally around trying look good and overthink things like Bond. He's a more down-to-earth hybrid of the two, out of his peak but still very much in the game and still honed to a razor's edge in terms of his skill-sets and persona.
As a very discerning and picky "action" movie fan I was delighted. As a father of one little angel with another on the way I was enthralled. It's what every father wants to see done to scum like this on screen, where torture isn't torture, it's justice. Other shows/films try to evoke a sense of sympathy for even the most dastardly of criminals when they're being tortured. Haha, not in this film. These animals stole his baby, his princess, his angel, his world, and they pay for it--DEARLY. And it's delivered on screen with such righteousness I was actually clapping to myself when one particular scummer felt the juice from a building's electrical current go through him.
To end this review, Neeson's performance is nothing but balls, a walking scrotum that dishes out karate and pain and death to those who wronged his daughter. I want to give it 10 stars but settled on 8 simply because while the film is great, it's not perfect. There are quite a few implausibilities on the production's part, the PG-13 rating oozed through a little too much in that rushed, mass-audience targeting that Hollywood does so often, most notably in the hugs-n-kisses Disneyland ending with the daughter. The guy killed half of Paris getting his daughter back and nary a single cop or investigator has any interest in him. As said, I put these on the production's list of faults, not the actors or characters they portrayed. That part of it was top-notch. If you haven't seen this film, see it NOW.