Review: Taken (2009)

[Scott Mendelson]

Taken
2009
93 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Usually when someone opines 'oh, they don't make them like this
anymore', they are paying a sort of high compliment, as if said film
represents a lost form of quality. But Taken absolutely fits the bill
of the kind of movies that they 'just don't make anymore'. But it's no
classic; in fact it's not even all that good. But it is something all-
too rare in the post-Columbine/post-Lieberman FCC hearings: a mid-
budgeted, star-driven, violent thriller. That Fox edited it down to a
PG-13 by slightly toning down the blood and gore doesn't make it any
less of a trashy relic of a bygone era. And, by keeping the action
fast, brutal, and plausible, the film succeeds in actually being a
superior update on those 80s relics like Commando.

A token amount of plot - Bryan Mills' daughter (Maggie Grace) is going
away with a friend to Paris, much to her father's consternation. Since
Bryan (Liam Neeson) is an ex-spy, he's a little more paranoid than
most. Alas, his instincts turn out to be correct when Kim and her
friend are almost immediately kidnapped by human traffickers. Now
Bryan has 96 hours to get to France and use his 'special set of
skills' to get his daughter back before she truly disappears into the
underground realm of the international sex trade.

To director Pierre Morel 's credit, nearly a third of the short
running time is used to set up the relationships and characters before
heading into the chase. We get a good look at the somewhat overtly
forward relationship that Bryan has with his daughter and ex-wife
(Famke Janssen, who is given absolutely nothing to do), and the
peacemaking attempts by the new husband (Xander Berkley, who gets
about six lines of dialogue). We get a sampling of his talents when he
accepts a quick gig to protect a famous pop star, and we get a couple
fun scenes of him cooking burgers with some old spy buddies. By the
time the kidnapping occurs, the relationships are established enough
that the last hour of pure chase and action aren't completely
pointless.

The abduction scene itself is the best scene in the film, but if
you're lucky enough to have avoided the thrill-spilling trailer, I
won't ruin it here. The rest of the film follows a regular
investigate, interrogate, chase and kill motif found in films like
Target or Man on Fire. The violence isn't nearly as grisly as Man on
Fire, and the film making is less stylized as well. Oddly enough,
since it was made by French filmmakers, the film has a distinct whiff
of Europhobia. Foreigners come in exactly three varieties: scary (the
French), scarier (the Albanians), and scariest (the Arabs). One could
argue that the French filmmakers are casting their immigrant brothers
as boogiemen as a form of ethnic bigotry, but any history on that
would require more research than this film deserves.

Despite a strong first act, the film never really pays off on the
issues that are brought up. While Bryan is right to worry about his
daughter's safety, one could argue that she would have been more
honest with him and more helpful if he hadn't been so controlling in
the first place. And while it's refreshing that Xander Berkley doesn't
turn out to be the secret bad guy, his casting in a glorified cameo
creates a giant red herring that hangs over the movie right up until
the climax.

What makes the film work is the commanding lead performance from Liam
Neeson. This is a wonderfully blunt, thoroughly compelling star turn.
Bryan's single-mindedness and lack of compassion for anyone stupid
enough to get in the way is a nice change of pace from the recent
spate of introspective, self-loathing action heroes (Jason Bourne
probably would have wept amidst the carnage... 'look what you foreign
meanies made me give!'). Neeson looks incredibly young and fit (which
I suppose justifies 25-year old Grace playing a 17-year old), and he's
obviously relishing the chance to play a cold-blooded action bad ass.
If the film does well enough, this could easily turn into a Liam
Neeson franchise.

If this were the 1980s, movies like Taken would be a nearly bi-weekly
occurrence. But now even Paramount (previously the home of the star-
driven thriller) would rather risk $150 million on GI Joe than spend
$40 million on another sure-to-be profitable Alex Cross movie. Thus,
such genre exercises are in short supply. So while Taken does not
quite qualify as 'good', it does work as 'good fun'. It's lean, mean,
and occasionally stupid in that old fashioned way.

Like Pierre Morel's previous film, District B13, this is both
incredibly silly and quite fun (alas, Liam Neeson doesn't get to
perform parkour). Like the Jason Statham/Jet Li action film War (for
which Morel was the cinematographer for American director Philip G.
Atwell), this is the kind of movie that we probably shouldn't give a
pass to, but we miss the genre so much that it feels like a reunion.
In the post-Columbine age, far too many cops' partners have gone un-
murdered. And too many unsuspecting daughters of spies and soldiers
have freely traveled abroad, unmolested by foreign fiends. Leave it to
the French to give Americans what we didn't realize we were missing.

Grade: B