Next time Liam Neeson says "I will find you and kill you", you better watch out!

Rating: 8/10 (4 June 2009)

As you all know I am very rarely wrong(note the sarcasm, lol), well this is one of those cases where I was extremely wrong. When I saw the trailer for the movie Taken, I thought "Oh, great, another 'surprising and suspenseful' thriller that will I'm sure be the ending we never saw coming", after all I've seen way too many of those movies. But after so many positive reviews of this movie I decided to go ahead and give it a fair shot. I adore Liam Neeson, but when I heard the role that he took as a deadly agent that you don't wanna mess with, I was in question. I tell you, this movie took me by complete and total surprise, this was a great movie. The story is something that we've seen a million times before, but what made this movie more special then the others are the fantastic performances and script that made this into an exciting and intense thriller.
Bryan Mills is a retired CIA operative from their elite Special Activities Division. He describes his former job as being a "preventer," but has recently retired in Los Angeles solely in order to be close to his 17-year-old daughter Kim who now lives with his ex-wife Lenore and her new wealthy husband Stuart. Mills discovers that Kim wants to take a holiday trip to Paris, with her friend Amanda. Despite his initial concerns about the trip, Mills allows her to go, later discovering that their actual plan is to travel around Europe following the band U2. Arriving at the Paris airport, Kim and Amanda meet a Frenchman named Peter, who offers to share a taxi with them to their apartment. When they arrive, Amanda reveals to Peter that she and Kim are unsupervised, because her family is in Spain. Peter invites the two girls to a party; Kim is reluctant, but Amanda, who is sexually attracted to Peter, hastily agrees. In the house, Kim receives a phone call from her father, which she answers in the bathroom. From the bathroom window, she sees men entering the main room and abducting Amanda. Mills is able to gain critical information about the kidnappers in the final moments after Kim is kidnapped by telling her to shout out everything about them that she notices. Briefly, Mills talks to one of the kidnappers, warning him that unless Kim is released, he will pursue him and kill him.
Seriously, I'm so glad that I was wrong about this movie, I couldn't tell you how many times I had my hands over my face or cheered or screamed during this movie, it was so exciting. Liam Neeson, I couldn't believe how scary he was, I've seen him in tough guy roles before but just the delivery of the line "I will find you and kill you" was delivered so perfectly, just calm, cold and confident. I just loved how the bad guy said "good luck", yeah, he wasn't as confident when Liam popped up in to get his revenge. Another thing about this movie that I absolutely loved is that it wasn't one of those "big twist" endings that are so stupid and predictable, this was just one of those "in the wrong place at the wrong time" situations. I highly recommend Taken if you get the chance to see it, it's exciting and a great movie. Liam is one dude you do not want to mess with.
8/10