An American in Paris

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2009)

***SPOILER ALERT*** Over the top thriller with Liam Neeson as the indestructible ex-CIA Agent Bryan Mills a man you just don't f**k with if you want to stay alive or remain in one piece.
Bryan against his better judgment allows his virgin daughter 17 year-old Kim, Maggie Grace, go on a two week vacation in Paris with her oversexed girlfriend Amanda, Katie Cassidy, so long as they don't go so far as within ten blocks of their hotel room. Bryan's family life-which resulted with his wife divorcing him- has been royally screwed up in him being a secret agent for the CIA in that he never was around when Kim needed him when she was growing up.
As it soon turned out Bryans greatest fears came true with both Kim & Amanda being kidnapped by this gang of Albanian white slavery traffickers within hours of arriving in the "City of Lights". Like a shot Bryan is in Paris looking for Kim & Amanda and ends up manhandling the guy who had them kidnapped the gangs look-out man at the Paris Airport, for young pretty and innocent women tourist, Peter, Nicolas Giraud. Suffering form a brain concussion, in his being thrown by Bryan through a car window, and on the run for his life, from a mad as a hornet Byran, Peter ends up being crushed to death, when he forgot to duck, by an 18 wheeler. Seeing that he'll get no cooperation from the Paris Police, who all seemed to be paid off by the Albanian gangsters, Bryan goes solo in order to find Kim, and Amanda, breaking arms legs heads and spleens along the way.
The film "Taken" keeps topping itself in every scene that has Bryan confront his daughter's kidnappers. Making even James Bond look like a rank armature Bryan take out dozens of Albanian gangsters, and their French and Middle-Eastern associates, with the ease of someone pealing a banana! No matter what the odds are against him Bryan has no trouble at all in overcoming them with his expertise in electronics hand to hand fighting explosives knives and firearms. Bryan even has the uncanny ability to learn any language, like the very difficult Albanian, by just memorizing it from a dictionary with his photographic-like memory. Finishing off the Albanian white slavery gang Bryan then goes after, on his yacht, the #1 guy in the business of peddling an buying of human flesh who the gang was working for the filthy rich Shiek Raman, Nabil Massad.
***SPOILERS*** Scared out of his wits, in seeing what the outraged and out of control Bryan already did, all Sheik Massad could do was offer him, with a gun pointed to Kim's head, a deal for his worthless and rotten life. The deal was off before the startled Sheik could even finish the sentence with a bullet, from Bryan's gun, hitting him right between the eyes.
In the end Bryan not only ended up saving his daughter from a life of drug addiction and prostitution he also got her an audition with her idol top pop diva Sheerah, Holly Valance. Bryan, by being her bodyguard, had earlier saved Sheerah's life and her giving Kim, who's dream is to be a top pop singer like herself, a start was the least she could do for the proud, of his daughter, dad!