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Directed by Pierre Morel
Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Jaansen, Olivier Rabourdin and Nicolas Giraud
Genre: Action Thriller
The movie is about Bryan Mills (Neeson), an ex-CIA agent who attempts to rescue his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), who is kidnapped by a brutal Albanian sex-slavery ring.
She is abducted while on holiday in Paris with a friend. A seemingly harmless young man, Peter (Nicolas Giraud), befriends the girls while waiting for a taxi and extracts information about their lodgings which he passes on to the kidnappers.
The movie attempts to show a father's unalloyed devotion to his daughter. His actions make the viewer understand what it literally means to kill for love. He gives up his dangerous job as an agent to be closer to his daughter but is constantly reminded of his inadequacies by her mother, his ex-wife.
Bryan is forced to use all the skills he acquired in the past. He tells one of the kidnappers who picks up his daughter's phone whilst abducting her, "I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you, I don't have money.
But what I do have are a particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. "If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I'll not look for you.
I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you...and I will kill you." With this cold threat, the chaos starts. Bryan leaves a trail of bodies as he brutally works his way to the higher echelon of the kidnapping ring.
The movie becomes a continuous steamroller of violence as Bryan is involved in high speed chases following the kidnappers' trail, rescuing some of the kidnapped girls.
The stunt routines were brilliantly done with breathtaking driving and realistic hand-to-hand combat. The scenic beauty of Paris is a contrast as the narrow roads are an unlikely source of so much action.
The movie's characters show the trauma faced by families who lose their children to kidnapping and human trafficking. Neeson acts out the character of Bryan Mills perfectly, from the pain of a father losing a child to the cold, analytical killer who has no second thought about killing his daughter's abductors and their affiliates.
Famke Jaansen also plays the part of the worried mother, having to depend on a man she had come to despise. These performances give credence to the director's skills for creating high thrill movies. He directed the hit movie, The Transporter.
Taken, though thought-provoking in its overall theme of human trafficking and enslavement, captivating the audience with Bryan Mills' intelligence at tracking his daughter's kidnappers, one cannot but notice some of its loose ends.
The young man who had earlier led the kidnappers to his daughter had an accomplice, who fought with Bryan. One wonders why when the man is killed. Bryan does not make a follow-up on the accomplice since apparently his only lead was dead. Despite this small glitch and others, the movie's provocative theme and the corruption associated with it are problems that admit no boundaries and affect the entire countries of the world. Taken is a direct, "in your face" movie that will elicit a lot of emotion in the audience.