Dynamic Action Movie, with a Vengeance

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2009)

"Taken" is a great movie and distinctive among modern action movies, combining more realistic heart-thumping action scenes with a straightforward story line. I find it tiresome when a film has nonstop, gratuitous action that is unrealistic, pompous, and too drawn out. I thought "Quantum of Solace" fell into this category, although it was not as bad as something like "Charlie's Angels" in terms of exaggerated effects. By contrast, I thought the action scenes in "Taken" worked really well, in a suspense movie that steadily lets the mystery unfold.
The continual suspense is presented in an easy-to-follow manner that naturally leads to the next stage. Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a semiretired CIA agent whose daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) wants to go to Paris for a while, ostensibly to visit museums, but later it is revealed that she and her friend want to trail U2 on the rock group's full European tour. Mills was reluctant to let her go in the first place, in conflict with his ex-wife Lenore (that's Bond woman Famke Janssen). The characters have some personality, but Mills is a regular guy, and there is no over-dwelling on their psychology. (I could meet "Dark Knight" halfway on the psychology, but I thought it went too far.) Mills remains skeptical about the trip, and then finds that Kim has been kidnapped into an Albanian sex-slave ring. That's the way I like it: good guys versus bad guys. I had a similar sort of visceral satisfaction as in "Delta Force," in which Chuck Norris really gives it to the terrorists.
The movie's intensive action is mostly in close quarters: a room, an elevator, a car, or just a regular face-to-face confrontation. Skillful filming and sharp editing give scenes an aura of believability. Besides, Mills is an agent skilled in hand-to-hand combat, helping us believe. He does mostly one-on-one nailings, but he dishes it out to a few groups of bad guys too. The fighting and shooting scenes are not padded or overblown, and the viewer is left with the sense that the filmmakers were relying more on coordination and execution of quick movements than on special effects. As for wide-open action scenes, Mills, in a fast-paced, realistic sequence, chases down a villain, who falls onto a lower highway. Wide-open action scenes in "Quantum" and some other movies contain too many unbelievable stunts (in "Quantum," e.g., exaggerated jumps from buildings or to other buildings).