Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Vacation catch-up: Taken

I was nervous going in to see Taken. The ads made it look full of violence and torture, and while that was definitely present, it was more like Bourne than Sin City. Liam Neeson has given up his career as a CIA spy to be closer to his 17-year-old daughter (Maggie Grace). She's still not sure if she can forgive him, but when she asks him to sign papers allowing her to follow U2's European concert tour (he thinks she's going to visit museums in Paris), he relents, and off she goes. She meets a guy at the airport who is obviously scoping them out. When people break into the apartment to kidnap the girls to sell into prostitution, Grace is on the phone with Neeson and he uses all the information to start looking for her. The rest of the movie is Neeson using all his CIA tricks, which are substantial, to dig into the world of Parisian human trafficking. There are quite a few gun fights, a knife fight and a car chase, but it's a terrific thriller. Neeson is incredibly sympathic as the terrified father searching for his daughter, and while surprised and sickened by what he finds, he just keeps going. I really liked it. There were a few moments when it seemed Neeson avoided bullets, by shrugging his shoulders away from them, but that was fine. Overall, 4 Lambs/stars

2 comments:

Rachel said...

Same here. I just like watching Liam let loose. He's usually so docile, that watching him beat the crap out of bad guys seemed like a nice change of pace.

Reel Whore said...

I noticed Liam shrug off more than a few bullets from his teflon jacket, but it was a great, no-nonsense action flick.