Taken Review

4 out of 5

Action, Thriller

The Verdict

Thumbs Up: Highly Recommended

Action fans who want a fast, no-nonsense revenge thriller. It’s rated PG-13 for intense violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content and drug references.

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Synopsis

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is a former CIA operative who’s trying to connect more with his teenage daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). After allowing her to take a trip to Paris, Kim is taken by mysterious characters. Lenore (Famke Janssen) is scared for her daughter and asks Bryan to save her before she’s lost forever. He will need all of his skills he has acquired from the CIA in order to carry out this task. How far is he willing to go to save her?

Spoiler Warning!!! Full Review Below

Full Review (Spoilers)

Producers: Luc Besson

The Good

The action scenes in this movie would keep you interested in the movie. Bryan used his various skills to take down bad guy after bad guy. The most impressive sequence came when he found Marko. It was non-stop action for roughly 15 minutes.

The memory playback was a nice feature to this movie. Bryan was able to figure out what happened from the video recording while inside of the room. This feature showed up again during many parts of the movie to show what happen, a short of flash back feature.

Liam Neeson’s portrayal of a father trying to reconnect with his daughter was quite heart warming. You could definitely smile when he tried many things to make Maggie happy. He went to the store to pick up the karaoke machine, and even spoke to the pop star to help with Maggie’s singing career.

The Bad

Lenore really thought it was a good idea for her 17 year old daughter to take a trip to Paris with her 19 year old friend. This is a trip you would save for your 21 year old. She really thought that allowing her underage daughter follow U2 around an unfamiliar country was the best idea is crazy.

The Paris police force couldn’t catch one guy especially after he came to the house of one of the head agents. It made the police force seem incompetent in their job. Bryan took 2 days of causing havoc to find his daughter and not once did the police force catch him. Come on, no one is that good especially if you’re using normal transportation venues.

The kidnappers and traders seem to run a crappy business if one guy could come in and wreck all of their plans so easily. Bryan didn’t come over with anything besides a voice recorder and the know-how of torture. He bumped into a girl with his daughter’s jacket too easily.

Originally published on the Bring On The Reviews Blogspot blog on March 23, 2014.

Taken (2009) Cast and Details

Taken (2009) is directed by Luc Besson and stars Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen. It runs 93 minutes and is rated PG-13. You can look up the full cast and crew on IMDb. You might also like my The Avengers review.

DC's Hypothetical Corner

Let’s say I change one thing. Maybe that one thing will make this movie better or more watchable.

It would be a different movie if Bryan joined Maggie on her trip to Paris like he originally wanted to do in the beginning. He could have popped out of the shadows and knock out the kidnappers. This would even save Amanda from dying. Just picture this movie with Tommy Lee Jones as Bryan Mills and Emma Watson as Maggie. It would feel like a mix between MIB and Harry Potter. Agent K going to save Hermione from the agents of Voldemort, ha!

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