Taken

Plot synopsis:
Retired CIA field operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) attempts to build a closer relationship with his shy daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), who lives with her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley). While overseeing and helping provide security at a concert for pop star Sheerah (Holly Valance), Bryan saves her from an armed attacker. Out of gratitude, Sheerah offers to have Kim assessed as a singer. Before Bryan can tell Kim, she asks her father for permission to travel to Paris with her best friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy). He initially refuses, but eventually agrees after Lenore pressures him. At the airport, he learns the girls are actually planning to follow the band U2 during their European tour.
Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Kim and Amanda meet a young man named Peter (Nicolas Giraud), who offers to share a taxi to learn more about them. Kim and Amanda go to Amanda's cousins' apartment, only for Kim to find that the cousins are in Spain. While Kim makes a call to her father, she witnesses Amanda being abducted in the living room. Kim follows her father's instructions to hide in a bedroom and listen closely. After she is dragged out from underneath the bed, Kim yells a description of her abductor. Bryan suspects one of the abductors has picked up the phone, so he states that if they release his daughter, he will not go after the kidnappers but warns them that failure will result in a hunt wherein death is an outcome. A man with an Albanian accent only answers "Good luck."
Sam (Leland Orser), an old friend and former colleague of Bryan, deduces the kidnappers are part of an Albanian sex trafficking ring and identifies the man as Marko Hoxha. He reveals that, based on previous history, Kim will disappear for good if not found within 96 hours. Using Stuart's private plane, Bryan flies to Paris, investigates the apartment, and finds Peter's reflection in a picture on Kim's phone. He finds Peter at the airport and tries to capture him. While fleeing, Peter is hit and killed by a truck.
With his only lead dead, Bryan turns to an old contact, French former intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel (Olivier Rabourdin), who now has a desk job at the same agency. Jean-Claude informs him of the local red-light district where the Albanian prostitution ring operates, but warns him not to get involved. However, with the aid of a translator, Bryan trails and infiltrates a makeshift brothel in a construction yard, where he finds a young woman wearing Kim's denim jacket. After a firefight with the mobsters, he takes the girl to a hotel, where he clears the drugs from her system.
The following morning, after Bryan returns from a heated conversation with Jean-Claude, the girl awakens and tells him of a safe house where the Albanians keep abductees. Posing as Pitrel, he enters the house, under the pretense of business renegotiation and police protection costs. Bryan identifies Marko as the man who spoke to him on the phone wherein a violent fight ensues, resulting in the deaths of all the other gangsters in the building minus Marko. A quick search reveals several heavily drugged girls, including a dead Amanda.
Bryan then tortures Marko for information using a makeshift electric chair. Marko explains of the high value of virgins in the black market and how Kim was sold quickly. Once Marko gives the buyer as Patrice Saint-Clair (Gérard Watkins), Bryan leaves him to die in agony from continuous electrocution. Later that evening, Bryan visits the Pitrels for dinner and after discovering Jean-Claude's corruption, he coerces him into providing Saint-Clair's location by wounding his wife in the arm with a gunshot.
Bryan infiltrates a secret sex slave auction beneath Saint-Clair's manor. As soon as Kim comes up for sale, he forces Abil, an Arab bidder, to purchase her. While making his way out, he is knocked out and chained to a pipe, but he manages to escape and eliminate Saint-Clair's henchmen. Bryan shoots Saint-Clair to reveal Kim's whereabouts, wherein the latter reveals of a yacht owned by a sheikh named Raman, before he is killed by more gunshots. Bryan boards Raman's yacht and dispatches his guards as well as Abil, who is revealed to be Raman's underboss. He enters Raman's suite, only to find Raman holding Kim at knife-point. Raman attempts to negotiate, but Bryan shoots him. Kim is reunited with her mother and stepfather. The film ends with Bryan and Kim visiting Sheerah.

Tags: insanity, alternate history, murder

Review:
The story itself draws on the current belief in Alien abduction, but in fact the real threat of being "taken" comes more from the scientists and military investigators who doggedly pursue their prey without any regard for the humanity of those they come into contact with, including the alien hybrids.
Spielberg is extremely important in that he has chronicled this changing mythology and our changing sense or ourselves beginning with "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" followed by "E.T."  "Taken" is far darker, but so are we.
That hasn't happened in a very long time..The story just gets hold of you and sometimes gives you goosebumps since it's so good!My favorite parts are the early episodes but the series really changes, or evolves might be better explanation, so it still manages to glue you to the TV..I'm a sci-fi fan that loves a good story but doesn't bother on technical or historical details (aka Trekkie's) so this series was top-score for me!/jon.
Then, last year it aired on the BBC and I watched the series for the second time.
I recently bought the DVD.Taken tells the story of 4 generations of 3 family's that all have something to do with alien-abductions.But is is not just about that, it also lets you in to their lives and lets you look at how they cope with things.I think the script is just brilliant an the actors are very well-casted.
It's a movie, a TV mini-series, a large collection of "theatrical moments," it's somewhat of a social/political commentary, it's a diary for all the old (and young) hippies, and it's a "message" flick about possible new frontiers, etc.
It's the best mini-series I've seen in my life, I'm just amazed about all the story line and after seen nine episodes i know that tomorrow when conclude the last one i will start to count the days for the release of the DVDs.If you though that X-Files was one of the best sci-fi alien themed series of all time you got to love this one too!...
This is possibly the best mini-series of all time, with excellent acting, killer plotlines, and storylines that get you hooked immediately.
After watching this turkey for 20 hours and to have no ending the only thing this series was good for was to show bowflex comercials.
When you watch something like this for 20 hours and get no reason for anything that happened there will probably be a series next year with no reason except to sell more bowflex's..
I remember there was a big hoo-ha about how Spielberg produced it with some directors and that it was suppose to be great.Recently i bought the box set and decided to watch it - I have to say I was really disappointed.
It was also unrealistic the way characters in the movie get killed and other characters got over them like nothing ever happened.In fact some of the acting were the worst and down right annoying.
I don't know who decided that Dakota Fanning is a good actor but she seems to be everywhere these days and she is always just as detestable as last time i saw her.
Things happen, neither we nor the characters seem to understand them very well, and then it's all over.But don't get me wrong, "Taken" is not that bad.
"Sometimes, I wish Steven Spielberg was taken..." to paraphrase an opening quote to this wasteful piece of cliches that should have taken about 45 minutes to summarize instead of 10 LONG hours.The effects are beyond cheesy, the X-Files references without the classy intellectuality, etc etc etc.
everytime i watch sci-fi movie; alien abduction,alien bodysnatchers..i fell bored and man..what the hell is that..alien becomes human..alien eats human...sick..everything is typical when it comes to aliens-movie-alike..apparently, i'd rather say that this TAKEN is such awesome..the visual affects, the actors and actresses..it may take somehow chronologically and consume a lot of time..but it still,a perfect drama series..at least this sort of movie doesn't let the aliens eat human-being and annihilate everything..i like this story as a story and frankly, i don't believe in aliens.
Being a fan Mr. Spielberg's movies I think he's losing the essence of story telling used in his earlier projects.
I am really enjoying the story line and I hate to see it end.A wonderful assortment of strong characters.I can't wait to see what is going to happen next.Why not make this into a weekly series.
My advice is that you dedicate one week of your life to watching taken, one episode a night, although it's good enough that you may go through it in only two or three nights.Starting with the Roswell incident of 1947, Taken chronicles three generations of Three different families leading up to the present day.
they all have a part in this incredible story of a visit from other beings, who want something from us which they have waited a long time for.There are not many names in the cast, I'll say that.
Instead of a sci-fi soap-opera, Spielberg and his crew would have been better off just concentrating on what the title suggests: alien abduction.
Instead it comes off as a bunch of previously used ideas repackaged as really corny drama centering around alien abductions.There's not much of an edge to "Taken", no new angle, so-so special effects, and a pretty mind numbing story that just plods along like an old farm tractor.
It's still too early to tell exactly where the series and story is going, but hopefully it ends up creating more suspense.
Take an X-Files episode about aliens, base it in the country somewhere, stretch it out for another hour and add in a whole lot of boring filler, and you get "Taken".
"Dark Skies" wasn't great either, but at least the aliens looked wicked, and the characters and story had some teeth..
Counting the four hours of self-flagellation for sitting through this painfully boring mini-series amounts to a whole day of my life which would have been better spent watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind twelve times.
I think it's not the matter of the long story, rather it's just that the story is not strong and developed enough to end with a 'big bang'.It ends just like ordinary family movie from Disney.
The biggest problem with Leslie Bohem's "Taken" (even though reviewers everywhere mention Steven Spielberg, Bohem - who executive produced with Spielberg and who wrote the entire miniseries - is surely the one who deserves the true credit/blame) is that it takes a very long time to tell its story.
Building it up is all very well, but sometimes it gets "methodical" confused with "boring," and combined with few of the actors (or characters) making much of an impression, plus the fact that the FX aren't up to Industrial Light and Magic standard, means that this throwback to the days of REAL miniseries - massively long epics ("Roots," "Centennial," "The Winds Of War," even "Hollywood Wives") rather than two-part TV movies - is something of an odyssey almost as long as the period it covers.In fairness, BBC2 has to share a bit of the blame - Sci-Fi at least had the sense to schedule the whole series for consecutive days, rather than put it on once a week (we won't say a word about the week they sacrificed it to the demon Snooker).
I've made it through to part six, I'll see it through to the end, and it's hardly "a stinker of intergalactic proportions" (as one UK critic claimed), but Steven Spielberg has Presented and will Present far more compelling series and movies in his career.You have to give him, Bohem and the various directors credit for ambition, however.
An example is when Allie's parents get caught by the military guys, we spend what seems like forever watching them drag their tired asses into the back of the truck, sit down and look around, only to have the General come and order them to get OUT of the truck and come with him, I mean, what's the point?
The whole mini-series is full of moments like this, and it's just painful.The special effects were fake-looking, the story was full of cheese.
I kept expecting someone to tell her to shut up already, I mean, I have a real problem believing even a kid who was part alien would talk like she does.
I only watched the first 2 hour episode of "Taken" and found it to be nothing more than a rehash of old sci-fi stories...there was absolutely nothing original.
If you want to see a better written show about aliens, go watch "Roswell" or "X-files".
When the marathon showing came on I watched much of the series (sorry, but who has 20 hours to spare?)  I was not impressed.Okay, I know what they wanted to do.
Most of the other actors gave good or adequate performances and I think their performances would have been better if they had been given a script to match their abilities.I guess my opinion of the series can be broken down to one scene.
I love Matt Frewer in general, so while his character's appearance is a bit...odd, I loved it anyway.Overall, the 40 hours of this series is overly long, and somewhat incongruous.6/10.
The continual Shirley Temple voice-over was irritating enough (and often incomprehensible, so lush was the American accent), but in episode four, the action actually stopped at least three times, while one of the characters launched into a long monologue, as they tried to explain the inexplicable plot.Based on episodes 1 -4, this isn't a very entertaining mini-series, in fact it's very tedious most of the time..
The episodes fill 4 times 1 and a half hour with a story that easily could have been told in a normal 45 minutes episode.What especially bothered me in these episodes was the narrator that sounds like Minnie Mouse and maybe makes sense later in the series but not here.The characters are also unbelievable thin and have no real soul in the first 4 episodes.
A derivative ,long and boring mini series that's more irritating than entertaining.The only reason that I can imagine some viewers enjoyed this poor excuse for "must see TV" is being asleep last ten or twenty years.It's as if there was never any other "UFO" movies made at all...
"Taken" plays with historical information from UFO lore and changes it as it pleases.Steven Spielberg's name is thrown about as much as possible, but if one expects a Close Encounters like experience, one will be sadly disappointed.Perhaps Spielberg had nothing to do with "Taken"...Just lending his name to another UFO project...Kind of like Andy Warhol's Dracula...Anyway, "Taken" features stiff acting, stiff writing,strange casting choices, incredibly amateurish special effects and false, self appointed sense that viewers are seeing something special and historically significant....Don't buy "Taken" DVD set...save your money and buy original The Outer Limits sets...You won't regret it..
A comedian once commented that by the time you reached 40 you had done and said anything funny that you were ever going to say.The same rule must apply to moviemakers because the Stephen Spielberg who made "Close Encounters" would surely not want his name on the credits of "Taken".Its a ragbag collection of ideas and whole sequences lifted straight from other TV shows and movies.with only the names changed.The first episode i saw had an "alien"--obviously CGI and looking much like one of those alien blow up rubber dolls you see sometimes.Sensing that "Taken" fell into the SBIG [So bad its good] category,i continued to watch.Heres an example - in one episode the alien ship is caught on radar hovering over [naturally] America.What do they do?
The ending, which I will not spoil, was an enormous letdown..I won't try to detail the plot, which spans fifty years, if you're reading this you've probably read a bajillion other comments and know what it's all about anyway, but I will hit two things that really stuck out in my mind..a) Little Dakota Fanning, as Ally, is an absolutely AMAZING actress, showing a depth of range and ability that is nothing short of astounding.
While they're not science fiction, if you ever want to see two absolutely brilliantly written and acted television mini-series, watch "Shogun" and "Roots." Those are commercial television at its finest.
I watched the first half of Taken (10 hours) and experienced what I had always hoped the X-Files would be, vis-a-vis aliens and government conspiracy: tight plot lines, true motivation, in-depth characters, subtle foreshadowing.
Is Bohem using the sheer length of this thing to explain how 'missing time' feels?It's also taken too long since Sci-Fi started teasing us with this debacle.
As a huge fan of "The X-Files" and related fare, one would think I would have viewed Steven Spielberg's "Taken" earlier than its ten-year anniversary.
Once you get to about the third episode, it starts really taking off to the point where you may finding yourself in "marathon mode" very quickly.Overall, "Taken" can appeal to three primary audiences: those who just love a good science fiction yarn, those who prefer character dramas of the highest order, and those who can appreciate the generational aspect of the whole experience.
I may have to watch more of the series to get more interested but the first show didn't really pull me in enough to want to watch the rest.On a side note, I timed about 40-45 minutes of the 2 hours was commercials.
Having a little girl narrate may have seemed like a good idea originally, but in the end, it's neither alienating enough, nor do the pretentious, poorly written lines make her appear wise beyond her years.
However being a Spielberg fan made my decision to watch the series Taken much easier.
The interwoven relationships between the characters is very complex and I look forward to watching the series again soon to pick up on the pieces of the story that I missed first time round.
This mini-series is un-Spielberg-like in many respects, most notably failing at the amount (not the quality) of special effects.
Overall an interesting series that really unfolds the SECOND time you watch it..
Spielberg is a great director and producer but is at the same time the king of film maker who believes in the same child theory about the kindness of every alien form who come to earth even when there are many many information and evidence about people who were attacked by beings of others planets.
I know the cast is great, the music and special effects are good but in the end the whole story turns in some kind of sequel of "Close encounters..." with real logic.
An ambitious effort with superb production values, Taken ultimately suffers from a lack of consistency in the writing by it's creator Leslie Bohem.The series starts off promising enough, telling the story of alien abductions and the evolution of the "Men In Black" government investigators, but goes wildly off course in the final few episodes, running off the rails entirely during the final two hours.
What started off with great promise quickly deteriorated into an utterly banal mess which not even its top-notch production values or the sincere performances of Ryan Hurst, Catherine Dent, and the truly remarkable Dakota Fanning can salvageWhile the leering, smarmy, ill-considered presence of Matt Frewer is the most obvious example, the best gauge to see how badly things devolved is the antagonists, which were the dramatic engine for this program, over the course of this miniseries  from the steely incompetence of Major Owen Crawford played by Joel Gretsch to the  banal, bumbling amorality of his grand-daughter played by Heather Donahue.However, this mini-series does perform at least one vital public service.It confirms what we all suspected when we first saw The Blair Witch Project  that Ms. Donahue is a horrible actress who should confine her `acting' to the Steak'N'Shake commercials that she is currently appearing in..
As the years go by we follow the lives of these three families as they continue to be affected by the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys who is the end product of decades of alien meddling and has powers beyond either species but is a valuable prize to both the aliens and the Government who seek to understand.`Steven Spielberg Presents Taken' - when I first read about this series I'd assumed that it was a tragic tale of how even famous directors can be victims of crime over the Christmas period, but no  it is a tale of alien abductions told over 50 years.
Like I said most of the cast 9and there are too many to go through) are good and only occasionally is someone so weak that it is hard to watch!Overall this miniseries struggles occasionally because the character focus lets it fall into cloying sentimentality too often and neglects the sci-fi element of aliens and Government conspiracy, generally leaning more towards the former than the latter.
I started watching Taken, thinking it was just some regular Sci-Fi series about roswell an aliens.
There are worse ways to spend your time than by watching "Taken," but on the whole you're really not missing much by skipping it.
One moment they're children, the next they're adults and we're expected to accept whatever they do without wondering what, exactly, motivates them.This is most annoying in the Crawford family, when the third generation character, Mary, takes over the government project Owen started.
Sappy love stories interrupted by Alien AbductionsPretty much sums up the mini-series.
We've all had your ET and Close Encounters experience - and yes we loved them already, but please, please let us see something new if you're going to be involved!In the end, that's the problem with Taken" -- ambitious as it is - it's just nothing new - and sorry, but with the way this mini-series was marketed I think the audience had the right to expect something a little new.
I would think that Spielberg would want us to take the premise of alien life seriously.