Powerful, Relentless Action Movie about the Modern White Slave Trade

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2009)

Liam Neeson is a retired CIA action man, whose wife has abandoned him for a rich creep, and the couple are spoiling his 17 year-old daughter and driving a wedge between him and the girl. The girl has foolish spoilt brat rich friends and is persuaded by a featherhead named Amanda to travel to Paris with her, which Neeson tries to prevent but cannot. As soon as the silly girls arrive, they are spotted at the airport by Albanian gangsters who provide girls for captive, drugged prostitution and sell the prettiest into the white slave trade. Naturally, the girls are kidnapped, and Neeson's daughter being especially pretty is destined for the harem of one of those corrupt Arab sheikhs we all love to hate, this sheikh having a luxury boat docked at the quays of the Seine in the heart of Paris. Neeson moves into action mode, rushes to Paris, knowing he has only 96 hours to save his daughter before she vanishes forever. 'I have special skills', he says, and that's for sure. He starts tearing Paris apart, kills lots of disgusting Albanian gangsters (can't somebody do that for real, please?), and is generally unstoppable. Nor can we catch our breath, what with all the emergencies, chases, fights, murders, and fantastic tension. Neeson is brilliant at this role, giving us the impression he was born with an automatic in his hand and held his mother at gunpoint demanding his first suck. This is a very, very exciting movie. It is also incredibly horrifying, because the extended cut on the DVD shows all the young girls lying drugged on beds in rows, with men queuing up to rape them after buying tickets! Alas, I fear this all really goes on, but without Neesons to stop it. The ultimate organiser of the high-level sales of girls to sheikhs is a suave member of Paris society who lives in a huge mansion with parties for hundreds of people but with kidnapped girls being sold at auction in the basement while unknowing socialites drink their champagne upstairs. This theme must have come from co-writer Luc Besson, who is well aware of the rotten state of much of the French power elite. Indeed, French political and commercial corruption is an increasingly urgent theme in films made or written by French cinema makers these days, as 'Tell No One' showed so powerfully (see my review of 'Ne le Dit à Personne'). You have to be strong to see the extended cut of this one.