Taken (2009)
Directed by Pierre Morel
Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace
Release Date January 30th, 2009
Published January 30th, 2009
You have to judge movies for what they are and not for what you think they should be. That's not an easy standard when you see as many movies as I do. Many movies have such great ideas that fail to be realize and you can't help but dream of what that movie might look like. That's often to the discredit of the movie you are watching. Taken for instance is a trashy movie but it has so much more potential to not be complete trash. But, if I am to be fair, I have to judge it as the trash it is. By the standard of trash, Taken is okay trash.
In Taken Liam Neeson stars as a nondescript former CIA operative Brian Mills. Brian has recently retired to Los Angeles to be near his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). His time in the agency estranged him from his daughter, and her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen), and now he is attempting to make amends. Meanwhile, Brian makes money on the side working as a security guard for a major pop star. This scene exists so that Brian can offer exposition regarding his talents and resume
For her birthday, Kim tells her dad that she wants to go on a sightseeing tour in Paris with her best friend. In reality, Kim and her friends are going to blow off the site seeing and are planning to head across Europe on her stepdad's dime to follow U2 around on tour. Brian is against the idea of such a trip, even without knowing about the concert tour, but under the pressure from mom and daughter he agrees.
When Kim arrives in Paris we quickly find out why dad was so worried this trip. The girls immediately meet a suspiciously friendly stranger at the airport. He calls some friends and the girls are soon kidnapped. In a scene that has become iconic from the film's trailer, Kim calls her dad as the kidnapping is in progress and Neeson as Brian delivers an admittedly quite good monologue about his 'set of skills.' Vowing revenge, and to retrieve his daughter unharmed, Brian travels to Paris and uses his specialized skills to track down the kidnappers.
Taken then quickly devolves into a series of ever more ludicrous car chases and fisticuffs but that isn't such a bad thing. Under the direction of Parisian director, Pierre Morel, the action and stunts of Taken are top notch stuff. Blessed with the intense and broody Liam Neeson as lead badass, Morel sets up the action and watches Neeson knock it cold.
The trashy story of Taken and the unending violence are entirely ludicrous. Genuinely, the action and plot of Taken make Jack Bauer on 24 look like a logical masterpiece. That said, the action is big, loud and daring in many ways and it works if you are into big, loud, daring action minus all of that tricky, plot stuff.
Keeping it simple, perhaps too simple if you prefer your movie to have characters and intelligence, Morel and company set out to make a trashy French action movie with wild car chases and a high body count and they succeeded. On its own terms, Taken is trashy but it is entertaining trash. If you're willing to overlook a lot of silliness, and pretend that it all makes sense and is totally possible, you might just enjoy this kind of trash.
