Excellent adrenaline pumping action/drama; Neeson excels as a lethal blunt instrument

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2009)

TAKEN (2009) ***1/2 Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkeley, Katie Cassidy, Jon Gries, Leland Orser. Jean Claude Olivier. Excellent adrenaline pumping action/drama about former spook Neeson facing his ultimate nightmare: his teenager daughter (Grace) is kidnapped while traveling abroad in Paris by a white-slave trading outfit. Bad news for the bad guys as Neeson's amazing technical skills of survival and torture are given the full gamut in breezily executed sequences of vengeance and a father's anguished quest to save his child before the clock runs out. Paced with precise pockets of dread and unease by Pierre Morel thanks to a lively screenplay by filmmaker Luc Besson and collaborator Robert Mark Kamen, the film rockets along like a cruise missile and Neeson is no slouch proving his mettle as a lethal blunt instrument that would have Jason Bourne and James Bond bowing to his quick displays of cunning and execution.