"Taken" For A Ride

Rating: 7/10 (8 October 2012)

I give this flick a thumbs up for the non-stop action and thrills it provides, on the other hand thumbs down for an implausible plot with gunshot plot holes. Liam Neeson plays an ex-CIA agent who calls upon his skills and experiences in the good guys vs bad guys field when his beloved teenage daughter is kidnapped in Paris while on holiday by an Albanian mafia to be sold into prostitution. While his resolute courage and resourcefulness and abilities are not what is called into question, the situations he gets himself into are. Are we to believe that he could easily track down the head of the kidnapping ring based on a brief phone conversation and very vague tips from fellow ex-CIA members? And then there's the fact that he on his lonesome manages to score a round into 35 antagonists, yet he himself escapes with barely a scratch. Albanians, Frenchmen and Arabs must be such lousy shots. The there's the scene when he does get caught by the mob and hung by the wrists from the ceiling, and at the opportune moment, the bolts connecting the pipes he's shackled to give way and he instantly is free of his bonds to tackle the baddies. Perhaps Lady Luck was with him all the way through. Not to mention the incongruous ending where he brings his daughter to singing idol Sheera for voice lessons. After all that she went through, surely she would've suffered a great deal of post-traumatic stress, yet she acts as if the whole thing never happened - or maybe she went to an exceptional skillful head-shrinker. For all that, ignoring what I've just mentioned, just sit back and enjoy the action.