Neeson is the perfect fit for a revenge thriller long overdue

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2009)

"Taken" only begs one question: Why did it take producers this long to give Liam Neeson his own revenge thriller? OK, there was Sam Raimi's "Darkman" in 1990, a cult favorite before Neeson rose to fame, but the Irish actor who seems to age like fine wine has dished it to baddies in 18th Century Scotland ("Rob Roy"), a galaxy far, far away ("Star Wars: Episode I"), during the Crusades ("Kingdom of Heaven") and dare I say WWII Germany? So what took so long for him to be a modern day retired CIA agent?
"Taken" and Neeson belong together. Neeson has always well-played the wise mentor role that draws respect from all other characters in the films he's in and the audiences. He's a natural fit to play an older man still capable of laying a beat down on amoral criminals, particularly of the European trash variety. "Taken" is a simple but genius vehicle to deliver that.
Written in part by Luc Besson, whose films ("Leon: The Professional") have only gotten more commercial with age ("The Transporter" and sequels), "Taken" tells the simple story of former CIA agent Bryan Mills, who retires in order to make up for lost time with his 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace from early "Lost"), a relationship destroyed by Bryan's never being around. When Kim goes to spend the summer in Paris, her overprotective father calls her right when she gets there, convenient timing considering she's about to be kidnapped. Bryan vows revenge on the kidnapper and flies to Paris, using his incredible wealth of skills to track her down and make her captors pay.
Besson gives us another action/revenge story motivated by love. The father/daughter connection can never be exploited enough considering it guarantees our utmost sympathies. It also makes the hard-nosed "don't mess with me" attitude of Neeson on his revenge spree all the more crucial in our minds. "Taken" never has a dull moment because we're behind Neeson 100 percent and love every move he makes.
Sure, "Taken" could go much deeper. It's sort of just assumed that part of Neeson's motivation is to prove to his daughter how much he cares, but that never actually crosses our minds thanks to anything that's in the script or that director Pierre Morel does. It also couldn't hurt to make Bryan a bit more conflicted; give us some sense that he's not exactly a paragon of justice, something that would make "Taken" come more from the head and a tad less from the fists. Instead, the movie happily enjoys the fact that it's plot, motivation, action and force of an actor in Neeson will win over the audience. And it definitely does.