Liam Neeson Makes Taken an Adrenaline Rush With Heart

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.

McFarlane's Shannon Lies Down on the Job

In a show filled with compelling characters, Shannon Rutherford never quite measured up to the rest of the principal cast of LOST's first season. She didn't start to get really interesting until the last few episodes. Before that point, she spent most of her time engaged in some variation of the activity depicted in her McFarlane figure: lying on her back in an orange bikini, cushioned from the hot sand by a vibrant multi-colored towel, with a pair of sunglasses to keep the sun out of her eyes and help her maintain her distance.

When you remove the other series one figures from the pegs attaching them to their habitats, they can almost stand upright, but Shannon is stuck in that silly lounging position, bare feet hovering just above the sand, dirty blond hair clumped against her head, a bottle of water and another of lotion close at hand. In the cardboard backdrop, the calamitous scene contrasts with her air of aristocratic apathy. As wreckage burns, red-shirt castaways struggle to get their bearings, and her step-brother Boone marches fuzzily toward her, probably preparing to reprimand her for her inertia. It's not a colorful scene, but a zoned-out Shannon doesn't make for the most interesting figure.

But I couldn't resist. When I saw her lying on a shelf in a battered box with a half-price sticker, I snatched her up. Maybe it was pity for the character, who started out annoying but became more sympathetic as time wore on and never had the opportunities for development that were afforded most of the other major castaways. If they wanted to round out the series with a blond beauty, I would rather have Claire, but it's of some consolation that she will be manufactured with the third series, if there is one. Here's hoping!

With the backdrop and stand, Shannon is a bit longer horizontally than most of the other figures but considerably shorter vertically, since she is lying down. Press the button on the black box, which requires a pair of AAA batteries, and you get to hear three ever-so-charming quotes from the show.

* "What's a four-letter word for 'I don't care'?"

* "The plane had a black box, idiot. I'll eat on the rescue boat."

* "You want my information. Name: Shannon Rutherford. Age: 20. Address: Cr**hole Island."

Ah, yes, Shannon. Such impeccable people skills. At least the creators give her a little credit with her prop, which is Rousseau's map of the island. It unfolds to be quite large and would look nice on a wall if you don't mind a few creases. The map comes complete with Rousseau's random scrawling, the interpretation of which marked a major change in Shannon's attitude on the island. Once she realized that there was a way to make herself useful, she became a lot less insufferable.

Of the six figures in McFarlane's first series, Shannon is easily the least interesting, but it's still not a bad sculpt, and the map is a pretty cool artifact to have. If you're a big Shannon fan or just want to complete your collection, she shouldn't be too hard to come by for ten bucks. I just hope that Claire gets her time in the spotlight too!