Action Movie Reviews: Taken

 Taken was an enjoyable film of the action genre, but seeing as this was a cracking good thriller type movie as well, the title of the film gives it away as you know that someone must be taken and that is Liam Neeson's Daughter in the film Kim as she is on a planned tour to follow the band U2 around the whole of Europe with her friend Amanda, but it doesn't even start as they are both kidnapped from their apartment by the Albanian underworld intent on selling them to the highest bidders as unwilling prostitutes which is usually called trafficking.

The films first 25 minutes is obviously spent setting up the disjointed father/daughter relationship as Liam Neeson's character has become the part time dad and is on the side lines to another bloke who has muscled in on his wife, because he preferred to work long hours at the government rather than want to have a good old tumble with his very wife sexy Famke Jansen.

I usually only watch a few of these action films once in awhile as I prefer to watch horror films mostly, but this one was going cheap so I bought it and actually thought it was quite good, although the usual routine story plot point of Neesons character being an ex spy was rather convenient, why could'nt he have been an ex bin man, he could have hurled bin lids at the baddies!!

When the bad guys take his daughter, there's an all important show of words with Neeson explaining he has an acquired set of skills and all that jazz and he will find them and kill them and then after that it's just a case of him putting two and two together to find all the pieces of the puzzle to locate his daughter and he only has 96 hours to do it, although there is no direct tension on the timing as I thought that would have been even better, but alas no, he does it in less than 96 hours...impressive!!

The film passed a couple of hours and it delivered on the tension, but what it failed to mention is that Liam Neeson's character killed a lot of people on the way and this was brushed off it seems at the end and there was no hint of any police whatsoever whilst causing mayhem in Paris finding his daughter, sure there was a slight rumble with one of his old government colleagues who now has a desk job in the thick of criminal dealings with the criminal underworld and that resulted in a few police officers hanging around.

At the end of the film all seems well and no possible action is taken in the result of him tearing up Frances capital, maybe it happened off camera when the credits rolled up, I don't know!

Anyway, despite that minor quibble, the film remained enjoyable and enough to keep my interest for a couple of hours and my wife too which made a change, because she usually hates the films I buy (again mainly horrors!)