Two or three tense sequences can't stop the slump

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2009)

Maggie Grace as teenager Kim Mills is not a natural worrier. She is ready and set to follow the rock group U2 all over Europe as they gig, presumably with little plans for the daily travelling movements. Her dad wastes a great amount of time thinking about what could happen - pleading with her to terminate her plans and stay safe in America. What does he know that we do not know? Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) loves his daughter and seems to have taken a congratulatory early retirement from the CIA for family needs. He wants to be close to his daughter even though his relationship with his wife (Famke Janssen) is broken. 'I know the world' Bryan tells them and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. His career job has forced him to contemplate the intentions of those around him. Since many bad things often can't help but rear their heads when he is about, it is a good thing the man is skilled at playing invisible.
Those who best know Bryan speak highly of his many interests, his high intellectual processing, his ability to shift gears and tasks when the urge strikes itself. We are told all this needlessly in the early sections even though one promising sequence sums up everything spectacularly. Mobile phones have been on big-budgeted movies radar for many years now and when such household commodities prove a nuisance, screenplays go to extreme lengths to anul their presence. In Pierre Morel's "Taken" the mobile phone takes centre stage. Without them the movie would suck. The great scene, striding into the picture around the twenty minute mark, films Bryan anxiously dialling the cell phone number for his daughter as she should have arrived in Paris some hours ago but never gave notification.
Read the full review at my personal website: - - http://www.sightforallseasons.co.nr/