Neeson Month: Mini Review - Taken

So, it’s July, you know what that means

Neeson Month!

Liam Neeson, the man with a very particular set of skills, we’ve seen crop up in a couple of movies already. He had a cameo in the Dark Knight Rises and he played Good Cop/Bad Cop in the Lego Movie, but we’re going to look at a few more examples of his work, both the good, and some of the bad too. But why not start with the movie that coined the phrase I used earlier in this paragraph, Taken

Released in 2009, Taken was a huge hit, making over $200m on its modest $25m budget. It’s reception critically was a little more mixed, holding 59% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 5.8/10 and a 50 on Metacritic. It was also involved in some very strange controversy when someone fraudulently said this was based on a true story. Turned out to be all lies of course, but still kind of intriguing. But to the movie itself.

Ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) attempts to use his time in retirement to bond with his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace) but as she heads to Paris she becomes the victim of kidnapping, a word avoided in the film for some reason. So, since the police can’t do sh*t thanks to the corruption under Jean-Claude Pitrel (Olivier Rabourdin) it’s up to Brian to use some minor detective work and his very particular set of skills to rescue his daughter before it’s too late.

Neeson is an excellent actor and it’s this that defined his role as an action star, and he puts in a good performance. Maggie Grace… just doesn’t look 17, she was in 20s when she was filming this movie, maybe a case of miscasting but she does what she needs to relatively well, she later moved to play Alice in Alice in Wonderland, something clearly went wrong somewhere. Most of the rest of the cast are decent enough, none of them get much screen time so it’s difficult to assess them.

The action is pretty solid, it takes a leap out of the Bourne series when it comes to hand to hand combat but unlike Jason, Brian is much more willing to kill and does so with significant violence. I’m going to be watching the unrated cuts because that was what I got on the DVD

But let’s talk about how contrived this movie. First of all, the mighty co-incidence that off the young people going to Paris, probably some of many and the ones that are kidnapped just happened to be the leads with a father who’s ex-CIA. But the co-incidences don’t stop there, Kim just happened to have a direct view of her running buddy being taken, just happened to have an abductor leave blood on the mirror which just happens to lead Mills right to him, and a series of co-incidences happens to lead to Brian to the exact person he heard on the phone, which leads him to the an auction where his daughter just happens to be the last candidate for sale. Yeah, if you think about the plot too much you’re going to end up realising it’s not especially good.

But it is carried through by great action and a great performance by Liam Neeson, and is widely considered the best of this series. We’ll have to see about that as Taken 2 and 3 are on the way.

Rating 69/100