Taken (2008) – on rental. I didn’t catch this film when it was shown in theatres here, but my interest was piqued when lead actor Liam Neeson’s wife Miranda Richardson was killed in that fatal ski accident while Neeson was doing promotion for the film .
What’s this 90 minute action-thriller film about? Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a loving father of his 17 year old daughter Kim, but is divorced from his wife. In reality, he’s also an ex-CIA agent but who is brought out of retirement when Kim is kidnapped by slave traders barely after touching down in Paris on a European vacation.
As a CIA agent, he’d willingly put his job at risk just to spend time with his daughter. Now, all his skills come to bear when he gets on the pursuit – and he’s downright scary in his job.
The first conversation he has with the kidnappers: he tells the lead kidnapper he has no money but instead has a very special set of skills that makes him a nightmare for people like him.
If they let his daughter go, he promises to forget the matter. If not, he says in an even voice “I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you.” Of course the moron must say “Good Luck” or otherwise, there’ll be no movie.
And what an amazing ride it is. It’s all guilty pleasure, watching Mills get on the chase, the kidnappers’ trail, and how he dispatches them in each encounter with no remorse. He’s a dead shot, a kungfu expert, hotwires cars, knows emergency medical treatment, an expert torturer, and eludes French intelligence and internal security with minimal effort etc. This is one guy you don’t want to mess with.
In truth, as escapist fun as the film is, realistically, it’s also a little incredible. Specifically, if the CIA really did trained its agents that good, i.e. omnipresent and omnipotent, why haven’t they found Bin Laden yet LOL?
There’s a couple of really brutal moments, including one in which Mills threatens the wife of an ex-associate. It’s unnerving, but the scene succeeds in portraying the kind of person he is when his interests are endangered. This is a father who loves his daughter, and for those fools who kidnap her, their world comes crashing down on them.
As exciting as the film’s action sequences are, it’s the moments shared between father and daughter that surprised me. In this sort of film, I’d expect character moments to be a matter of convenience. In Taken, they’re tender and actually brought me a small sniffle at the film’s conclusion.
This is also a film produced by Luc Besson, and his output ranges from amazing – like Léon in 1994 – to mediocre – like the last two Transporter movies. Fortunately, this is one of his best films in recent years that I’d rate as good as Léon.
A compact thriller and just stunning.
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