Last night, my friend Libbie treated her dad, her grandpa and me to the
movies. She'd won four free movie tickets, and they expired at the end
of January, so it was discouraging to discover that our chosen flick, Slumdog Millionaire,
was sold out. We did not submit to despair, however. No, we opted for
another movie, the previews for which had intrigued her dad. I knew
nothing about Taken except that it involved some sort of
abduction, but with a PG-13 rating, I figured it wouldn't be anything
too intense for me to handle.
Pierre Morel's Taken is,
as Libbie told me, "a guy movie." It's an adrenaline-pumping adventure
all about one very driven man blasting bad guys in a desperate search
for his daughter. That man is former spy Bryan Mills, portrayed by the
always excellent Liam Neeson. Now he has retired in order to be closer to his 17-year-old daughter Kim, LOST's Maggie Grace,
who lives with her aristocratic mother Lenore (Famke Janssen), whose
new husband is fabulously wealthy. Now that she has the means to pamper
Kim properly, Lenore rubs it in Bryan's face, but she needs his consent
to send their daughter on a summer trip to Paris.
Bryan
relents, but all too soon his worst fears about allowing two teenage
girls to go to Europe on their own are realized when Kim witnesses the
abduction of her friend while talking to him on the phone. He knows
she's next; from this distance, he's powerless to protect her, but he
vows to track her down and release her from her captors. He has
occasional help in his quest; his longtime buddy and former colleague
Sam (Leland Orser) provides valuable information on how to get started,
and once he arrives in Paris he makes use of contacts there. But mostly
he's on his own, relentlessly pursuing anyone involved in the
trafficking of teenage girls as prostitutes.
The subject
matter is gritty, and there are some disturbing scenes that show girls
much like Kim in this disturbing and seemingly hopeless situation.
Mostly, though, there's a lot of violence. I didn't keep a body count,
but it probably numbered at least 20, with Bryan doing most of the
maiming, whether with a gun, a blunt object or some formidable martial
arts moves. With one notable exception, he tries to restrict himself to
inflicting (sometimes fatal) injury only upon scumbags, but his ruthless
streak leads to some squirmy scenes. I'm reminded of LOST's
Michael, who witnesses his son's abduction and must come to terms with
just how far he is willing to go to retrieve him. Neeson is flinty in
this role, seemingly remorseless about the mess he makes en route to his
daughter.
While I didn't care for the barrage of violence,
especially at times when it seemed avoidable, I found it difficult to
fault Bryan very much for his methods when so much is at stake. The
strength of his devotion to his daughter is this character's most
prominent trait, which makes him quite sympathetic, particularly in
scenes that allow him to bestow fatherly care upon other young women in
distress. Grace is in the film relatively little, but I enjoyed her
rapport with Neeson and found her, on the whole, more likable than the
preening Shannon Rutherford, the character with whom I associate her.
She stretches believability by playing a character nearly a decade
younger than her but brings a giddy girlishness to the role that makes
it work.
The movie leaves some questions unanswered,
concerning itself little with the wider consequences of Bryan's mad run
through Paris. Does he bring about liberation for the victims he
discovers en route to Kim? Are there any legal repercussions for all the
crimes he committed? By that same token, there are contrivances in the
plot, particularly in the beginning. But if you want edge-of-your seat
action, Taken delivers, and with enough heart to satisfy a softie like me.
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