moviereview - Taken

TAKEN

	Against better judgement, a former government agents lets his teenage daughter travel to France. When she's snatched into the slave trade, he sets out to find her.	score 2	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkley, Radivoje Bukvic,

Director
Pierre Morel

Screenwriter
Luc Besson

Country
France

Rating / Running Time
M / 93 minutes

Australian Release
August 2008

Official Site

Liam Neeson as a vengeful ex-CIA, would-be Ninja warrior? If that doesn’t stretch credibility to breaking, Luc Besson’s script does as his kidnap drama turns into fulsome French farce faster than you can say scacré bleu! Helmed by cinematographer turned director Pierre Morel (who shot The Transporter for Corey Yuen), Taken is a balls-out burger that’s part Ransom, part Frantic, all with extra cheese.

Neeson’s Agent Bill sacrificed marriage for the service of country. Now a security jobsworth for his teenage daughter Kim’s favourite pop-singer, he gets to demonstrate his athletic ways. It earns him a favour that will neatly close the story and in this short time takes Taken into dangerous territory. Besson delivers the first in a series of thinly disguised telegraphs, bedevilling the tension of his story. “I need you to focus,” Bill urges more than once. But really, there’s no need.

When Kim takes an ill-advised holiday to France, she’s snatched into prostitution. Armed with the fury of a father scorned, the subtlety of a builder’s trowel, a bewildered look and truly unmanageable dialogue, Bill sets out to find her. Taken is on firmer ground when Morel gets to do what he does best; stage taught, often thrilling, action sequences. Bill’s pursuit of a runner through Charles de Gaulle airport is particularly exhilarating.

As righteousness turns to rage, he claims a staggering body count while taking down the Albanian slave trade and a few rogue Arabs with him. “We used to outsource torture,” he says, “but it was unreliable.” Rather like the film. Bill’s violent transition from loving father to killing machine and back is poorly handled at best. Taken is simply an exercise in audience-chilling violence strapped to a hokey yarn of familial love that fails on both counts.

// COLIN FRASER