Movie Review - Taken (2009)

starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, and Famke Jannsen
directed by Pierre Morel
written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen

Admittedly, this was an incredibly fun movie to watch. It was certainly enjoyable to see Liam Neeson -- Oskar Schindler himself -- taking names and kicking some ass. Who knew that Liam had it in him?

However, Taken is not a perfect movie. The flick has a very simple premise (which in and of itself is not necessarily a negative in a film). Girl goes to Paris, gets kidnapped, and her father decides that he will do anything to get her back. The problem I had with the film is twofold:

1) Both Maggie Grace as the kidnapped daughter and Famke Janssen as her mother and Liam's ex-wife were both horrendously awful. What 17-year old literally runs and skips towards her father not once, not twice, but at least three times in the span of a week? "Daddy! It's you! Let me run to you with my arms outstretched!" Okay, I know this sounds like nothing important, but it completely took me out of the movie. It was something incredibly simple, but it was completely ridiculous. And Janssen...she was playing ice cold über-bitch and there was no need for it. I'm not sure if this is the fault of the actors or the director, but whenever either of them were in a scene with Neeson, they paled miserably in comparison.

2) The first half hour drags on endlessly. There's a pointless series of scenes involving Neeson being a bodyguard for a pop singer. I understand that it was in there to show that Neeson can kick butt, but I just found myself waiting for the daughter to be kidnapped.

Now, the flick is completely and utterly unbelievable. The amount of people that Neeson's character kills was astronomical, but who really cares in a movie like this. You'll notice that I never mentioned Liam Neeson's character's name...the reason is because despite that endless backstory in the first 30 minutes, this isn't a movie where you come out remembering little things like that. Instead you remember the scene where Neeson electrocutes a guy by shoving nails into his kneecaps and hooking them up to jumper cables. When stuff like that happens, who cares what his name was?

The RyMickey Rating: B