turn off your brain for the good "good-God-do-they-expect-me-to-believe-that" Besson production

Rating: 7/10 (30 January 2009)

On facebook there is an event coming up I believe in June which is called "National Man Day", which will be a day for all men everywhere to feel and act like "Men", whatever that is. If there are any screening rooms available for this kind of created event, Taken could be a good choice as a movie to screen. It's a preposterous action movie fantasy that has a good dosage of Jason Bourne and surprisingly, and not offensively, some conservative connotations in it. Yes, conservative: where else will we get a France-is-evil tome that also includes a sex-slave trade (which, apparently, is based on real things going on in Europe right now) complete with deflowered girls the highest marker- yes, American girls, go to France and you will be sold into the sex trade- for Albanians or whomever the immigrants are with the can-do American government bad-ass with one step removed from Jack Bauer and a penchant for torture when it suits best.
Sound not like your cup of manly kill-kick-ass tea? Then look away and read no more. But if you're still with this, well, you know what you're in for, sort of. This is another vehicle by Luc Besson, as writer and producer, to use Paris as a backdrop for a crazy plot designed to give whoever star it is- usually Jason Statham- a run for his money for the good of the entire audience as super-violent escapist fare. The plot, with Liam Neeson's retired government agent who has a strength comparable to both Jason Bourne and Batman having to go to France after his daughter is kidnapped along with a friend, is of not much consequences as we've seen it in other molds and folds before, sometimes in sleazy packages or straight-to-video deals (one may wonder where Chuck Norris is when you need him).
But the plot actually becomes a little more believable, or at least acceptable, because of or in support of the presence of Liam Neeson. He's such an underrated presence today in movies, popping up when a director has the right mind to use him (yes, he was even pretty good in Phantom Menace), and in this case director Morel and Besson have here an action hero who shows weariness and real conflict on his face. He's not the first person you'd think to play Brian, but he's the right person for what he can bring to the part. He's tough as nails but isn't chiseled or completely stone-cold like Daniel Craig. There's something else going on, like he's thinking and makes us think with him as he crashes through glass and kicks and punches and shoots and strangles and bamboozles dozens of gangsters and baddies. He helps make Taken something of a wonderful contradiction: believably unbelievable all the way through. You know this guy can do these things because, frankly, he just can.
As my own mother, God bless her, said after seeing the movie: it gives a good enema to the brain. She meant that as a compliment, I suppose.