Action plus violence minus plot equals a wasted 90 minutes.

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2011)

It's hard to believe that with such ritzy credits this film could be so spectacularly awful. The story begins with the insulting premise that for teenage American girls, anywhere outside the US - even Paris - is likely to be dangerous. And it's downhill from there on.
Dire warnings, of what a nasty place the rest of the world is, quickly come true when the girls are kidnapped and Daddy (Liam Neeson) has to come bounding over the Atlantic in hot pursuit of the villains.
With the flimsiest of evidence to work on, and with the help of a conveniently cobbled together but ludicrously unconvincing back story, Neeson runs amok in Paris, leaving a trail of criminal damage, indulging in gratuitous violence and homicide - and all, of course, in a frightfully good cause.
The derring-do is so improbable that it tries one's patience. At one point, for example, Neeson drives a high performance car at top speed, through Paris, miraculously avoiding collision, in pursuit of a boat on the Seine travelling at about about 10mph. He'd have found it easier on a bicycle!
The characters of the fatuous main victims are so poorly drawn that one doesn't really care what happens to either of them - they've been deceitful anyway - and Neeson's character, as a devoted and loving father who is dedicated to violence and brutality is almost impossible to understand - or perhaps I'm just stupid.