Taken ***** (2008, Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen) – Classic Movie Review 2199

Liam Neeson is great as retired CIA agent Bryan Mills, who travels to France and uses his old skills to save his 17-year-old estranged daughter Kim (Maggie Grace, actually 25), when she is kidnapped with her friend while on a trip to Paris.

Kim lives with her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley). Kim manages to convince her reluctant, over-protective father to allow her to stay in Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy). There they share a cab with a stranger named Peter (Nicolas Giraud), who is working for a gang of Albanian human traffickers, who kidnap the girls.

Kim just has time to call her father and tell him what’s up, and Bryan speaks to the head kidnap and tell him release his daughter or he will find him and kill him. ‘I don’t know who you are but, if you don’t let my daughter go, I will look for you, I WILL find you and I will KILL you.’ Neeson keeps this tremendously low key and threatening and, yes, chilling. The kidnapper says ‘good luck’. Game on. Of course Bryan has recorded the entire conversation on his cell, one of his few clues to the villain.

It’s a really good situation set up brilliantly for a stupendous action thriller. Rarely have 93 minutes been so effectively used on film. The tension is there from the start. You don’t know quite where it’s headed at the start, but they make light and tense of the usually ponderous plot and character set-up. Once the Paris section starts, there are immediately and suddenly a couple of truly brilliant scenes, the one with Kim’s phone call and Bryan’s threat, and later his pursuit of Peter. Then one intense scene follows another is sharp succession as Bryan acts like a one-man army of vengeance, wasting half of Paris, as the bodies pile up. [Spoiler alert] In order to save you counting, Bryan kills 35 people on the way to trying to save his daughter.

There’s a fairly high level of violence as Bryan kills villain after villain, and one very unpleasant torture scene as Bryan tries to find out where his daughter is and keeps his death threat. It’s great that they hired a proper actor not an action hero from the role. And the decision pays off handsomely. Neeson keeps the character entirely credible and sympathetic, despite his totally unacceptable behaviour that we’re encouraged to approve of and admire. Most of the audience would love to be Bryan, and do what a man’s got to do, with a set of Jason Bourne-style special skills. Neeson’s martial arts style is Nagasu Do, a hybrid that borrows from Judo, Aikido and Jiu Jitsu.

There’s a specially well-crafted script by Luc Besson (also the film’s uncredited producer) and Robert Mark Kamen (who wrote Transporter) that gives everyone credible dialogue and the movie plausible, inventive plotting. With such a grand screenplay, breathless direction, brilliant stunts and sharp-as-nails editing, it’s hard to praise this thriller too much. They’re very hard to do, and this one does it brilliantly.

There are two versions of the film, the 93-minute international version and the edited US and UK cinema release version for a PG-13 or UK 15 rating. Some of the shoot outs, the torture scene and some fights have been shortened for the 90-minute cut version. The 18-certificate UK DVD boasts longer and harder, but it is just the original international version of the movie. If you’ve seen the cinema version, you’ll think you’re seeing the same film. Both have intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, drug references and strong language.

Costing $25million, the film was an unexpected huge hit, taking $145million in the US alone, and created a new onscreen image for Neeson as an action hero. Two sequels so far, Taken 2 (2012) and Taken 3 (2014), both of them disappointing.

Former Special Air Service soldier Mick Gould trained Neeson in combatives and weapons handling skill. Janssen was prompted by the story to take action in the real fight against corruption and is now the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime.

http://derekwinnert.com/taken-3-%C2%BD-2014-liam-neeson-forest-whitaker-maggie-grace-movie-review/

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2199

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/