Guilty as Charged

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2009)

I use the phrase "Guilty as Charged" because this movie doesn't pretend to be something it's not. The trailers portrayed exactly what the movie became, and didn't make the mistake of falsely hyping it up. The entire movie is perfectly summed up in the trailers with Leam's character's cell phone call;
(Don't quote this by the way, typing this by memory) "I don't know who you are, and if you're looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have any money. But what I do have is a very specific set of skills that I have acquired over a very long career, a set of skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you return my daughter now, that will be the end of it. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will hunt you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
And that's exactly what happens.
I was excited when I first saw these previews before most other people - in a theater watching another movie entirely. I made it a mission to find this movie, buy it, and watch it. And it was worth the new release price.
It's a basic premise. A divorced retired man who's had a vague and somewhat unexplained past job. A minor complaint right here. He calls himself a "preventer" and judging from his first job in the movie, I've come to assume he works as some type of security agent for the government. They should have clarified this better. Anyway, it's an interesting premise and reveals that he's not a remarkable super-hero. He's a man. With a broken family, but has a happy daughter regardless that loves him anyway. I liked this.
It doesn't take terribly long to get through the introductions, which is good because some of it seemed a bit forced. For example, when Bryan's (Leam) "war"-buddies come for a barbecue and start spouting their past adventures. Now, I don't know what government agents talk about casually but knowing how the job is, I don't see it very realistic to talk about things like that.
Now, I love me some character-development but the first ten minutes or so fell pretty flat. Fortunately, it gave you the bare-bones storyline and continues onward to the daughter being captured ("Taken", rather) and Bryan immediately gets to work with impressive and realistic (to me, anyway) resourcefulness. Including speed, as one of his friends inform him he has 92 hours before never seeing her again. Third complaint? The time limit mentioning seemed very unnecessary, and near the end it wasn't a fast-paced "race against time". It felt like he had plenty of it.
Everything else was great. I'm a huge fan of the Bourne movies and this felt like that, to a lesser extent. Not a lot of evading was happening, but Bryan constantly blew a hole through this particular slavery organization.
Not much else to say. My first paragraph of this review really sums up all my thoughts.