Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2011)

When his daughter is kidnapped abroad, a former CIA operative follows the trail of a sex trade ring and stops at nothing to find her.
Taken walks the fine line between "true action movie" entertainment and a a grim thriller. The formula works although there are times when you wish director Morel had made a clear choice between the two.
The movie starts well, establishing ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills as a flawed father with the best of intentions. And once his daughter is kidnapped (during a brilliant iconic scene involving a call between Mills and his daughter) the tension rises considerably. The action sequences impress early on and some people have compared them to the Bourne franchise.
However, the body count starts to pile up at rate that is hard to swallow when the feel and tone of the movie seems like a thriller or procedural flick. This is not Die Hard or Lethal Weapon where you expect a fun romp filled with humor and extravagant scenes and yet, the movie cannot be viewed in a serious tone as Mills leave a huge trail of killing and destruction behind him.
Likewise, the sex slave ring angle gives a grim tone to the entire movie but Taken never fully explores that aspect, keeping the movie fast and furious. The second half of the flick stretches the confine of realism but without ever becoming tongue-in-cheek. Liam Neeson is perfect as Mills but the rest of the cast sleepwalks through the film. Casting Maggie Grace (25 year old during filming) as Mills' 17 year old daughter is very questionable to me. So this is really a Neeson one-man show.
All in all, this is packaged as a tense thriller but is really just a good old action movie where the plot does not make much sense. There is nothing wrong with that but, with a tighter plot and an extra 15 minutes of character development, it could have been an even better movie.
7 out of 10