Liam Neeson, the perfect combination of "badass" and "sensitivity" ...

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2013)

Bryan Mills is a former CIA's operative whose longtime dedication earned him on one side "special skills" (mostly rhyming with kills) and cost him on the other side, his marriage.
As a secret agent, he's a combination of James Bond and Steven Seagal but as a husband, not so much. Yet you wonder what his wife Lenore (Famke Jensen) was expecting since she didn't marry a baker or an accountant, but looking at her post-divorce lifestyle and her new rich husband, she naturally feels triumphant over Bryan. But Bryan's attention is focused on his 17-year old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), he retired for a bodyguard job to spend more time with her. And there's a sort of genuine bond between both. And Liam Neeson is always believable as the misunderstood and hurt father.
In twenty minutes, the characters are all set-up, with more or less two-three dimensionality, Kim wants to become a singer, Bryan tries to connect her with a pop artist he protected from an assailant. He bought her a karaoke machine at her birthday, but her step-father out stepped him by offering the most predictable but no less efficient gift: a horse, and not any horse, one that makes the ill-fated "Khartoom" from "The Godfather" looks like a pony. The tone is clear, Kim is a cute, spoiled little girl and it's a miracle she didn't turn as bitchy and arrogant as her mother. And the conflict with the mother starts when she allows Kim to travel to Paris, and 'discover the world' with her friend. One step further, she would have bought condoms for her.
The script doesn't embarrass itself with subtlety as we immediately take side with Bryan who faces ungratefulness every time. He finds out that the travel in Paris is only the first step to a U2's European tour the two girls want to attend, he doesn't even know that the 'cousins' supposed to chaperon them are in travel. Reluctant to let her girl go, he finally resigns but gives her a cell-phone so she can call him from the international area: his very instinct just saved Kim. I spend time to describe the set-up because the action sequences only work because they rely on a very solid characterization: we follow the film less for the action, than Bryan's motives and the sympathetic feeling Neeson's eyes never cease to inspire.
The action takes off when Kim and her friend Amanda are kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers, luckily, Kim has enough time to tell Bryan that strangers came to the house. Bryan knows she'll be kidnapped he tells her to hide under the closest bed and describe the men with as much details as she can, anything can be helpful. She leaves a few indications, but enough to help Bryan to track down the whole network from this point to the end. According to Bryan's friend, the Albanians started abducting foreign travelers and after four days, there are chances Kim would be sold, and it would be impossible to find him. All Bryan has are his martial arts skills, his intelligence, his electronic expertise, his fatherly determination and 96 hours.
Bryan is like a combo or John Matrix r in "Commando" or Jack Bauer from the TV series "24", except that Liam Neeson has a quality in his acting, so efficient that you never see the 'superhero' he is, but the determined father. Without Liam Neeson, there are chances that "Taken" wouldn't have be 'taken' as seriously and be reduced to another action/thriller movie with a relatively conventional plot, which is actually the case, but one casting, towering in every meaning of the word, all the others is enough to elevate the film, into one of the best and most gripping action/thrillers of the 2000's. And if not the best, it certainly is the most memorable, through its capacity to build fresh material out of new stuff.
"A great film consists of three good scenes, and no bad scene", this is the statement of Howard Hawks, I used in some other reviews. Many would spot plot holes or unbelievable scenes, but one bad scene can only be judged on the way it ruins the whole narrative or make us lose our focus. No scene does that, foreign clichés, action overdose, chase, their flaws are forgettable because they all work as links between a few great scenes that redeem all the archetypes, and there are three great scenes in "Taken".
First, in a year rich in impacting movies such as "Slumdog Millionaire", "Milk" or "The Dark Knight", "Taken" takes the cake as the most memorable exchange during the infamous father-and-daughter phone that ends with Bryan's speech ordering the 'bad guy', whoever he is, to release the girl, and he'll forget everything, otherwise, he'll track him, find him and execute him. The following "good luck" with a strong accent is the trigger of Bryan's chase, and makes the confrontation even more 'electrifying'. Finally, Bryan contradicts all the stereotypes of the tough-guy-with-principles by shooting a harmless woman on the arm and threatens to kill her, if her husband doesn't give the information. Not only we believe he means business, but we still like him, hell, even Dirty Harry wouldn't have got away with that.
These three moments elevated the film above the usual standards of a simple cat-and-mouse thriller. What do they all have in common? They rely on the menacing presence of Liam Neeson, and his human look on the eyes, this unique capability to look strong and sensitive, to inspire our immediate sympathy. "Taken" has taken me totally off-guard, and although it's not flawless, and some characters are either underdeveloped or stereotypical, the film has an exhilarating straight-forward direction, as if the director, Pierre Morel was confident on the movie's potential and never tried to 'over-humanize' it, Bryan Mills carries the whole humanity.
And this is saying a lot for an action/thriller movie hero.