Renewed my faith in the action genre

Rating: 8/10 (12 March 2009)

Only a week ago I complained they don't make good movies anymore. "Ip-Man" finally gave me a worthwhile experience a couple of days ago, but "Taken" today re-news my faith in action movies again.
Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Karem haven't done it better together since they wrote "The Fifth Element" 12 years ago. Director Pierre Morel are new to me, but his debut as director was in another Luc Besson written "Banlieue 13" and he has been involved as cinematographer in both "The Transporter" and "Danny The Dog", which both are written by the Besson/Karem duo. To be honest Luc Besson haven't been convincing to me in much he has done since his work in back in those days with "Leon" and "The Fifth Element", but he is back now. No doubt about it.
"Taken" is very much mold in the same ways as the Bourne trilogy. The camera angles and the fighting style very much follows the way the Bourne movies was done, but here the main character are driven by his goal rather than spending half the time wondering who's the bad guys. It makes for better action rather than the spy vs spy ways of Bourne, and Liam Neeson does a performance Bruce Willis' John McClane from the early Die Hard movies would be proud of.
He is the been-there-seen-it-all former CIA-agent retired to spend more time close to his 17 year old daughter he's been seeing to little of because of his work. His daughter now lives with the ex-wife and a stepfather, and Neeson does an excellent job giving life to the father on the sideline in the early stages of the movie. A very common and realistic family way in these days, and as the main plot of the movie revolves around girl trafficking it stays with another relevant problem of the darker side of life too many girls are victimized by still.
It do take some time until the action unfolds, but the time is well spent giving the audience an insight into the relationship between the family and into the main characters background. And when it takes off, the movie doesn't slow down until the end credits.
I might have given my rating on the upper side of what it deserves, but as an action movie I think it really deserve it. If you watch it as the action entertaining it is, it delivers in more ways than I've seen in a long long time. Maybe even not since Die Hard, and that's about 21 years ago.....
Highly recommended 93 minutes.