Taken

Imagine if James Bond, in one of his many times with women, ended up having a daughter, and a few years later quits his work to spend more time with her. Imagine his daughter his kidnapped and now he must use all his past skills in getting her back.
Imagine this same scenario with Jason Bourne. The gritty attacks methods and genius ways of tracking people down.
This is Bryan Mills in "Taken."

Mills goes off to Paris to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped into the slave trade. He uses all his skills and contacts to find those who helped in taking her, and the audience follows him on his path of destruction.

Though the first half hour is an introduction to the characters, it lays out the groundwork for the relationship between Mills (played excellently by Liam Neeson, "Batman Begins") and his daughter while also showing an introduction to the skills that he has.



Mills his on the phone with his daughter when she is kidnapped while on a trip in Paris to follow U2. The kidnapper picks up the phone and Mills speaks to the unseen foe.
"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 very particular set of skills; skills 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 will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

After a long pause, all we hear is, "Good luck."

With that, the dramatic part of the story is pretty much over and the next hour of the film is fist/elbow/gun to the head.



The story is written by Robert Kamen ("Transporter," "Transporter 2" and "3," and "The Karate Kid") and Luc Besson ("Transporter," "The Fifth Element," "Transporter 2" and "3," and "Arthur and the Invisibles"). While this team has slacked on the "Transporter" series, this film picks their writing back up and creates a story that the audience can't stop watching even though they know that in the end Mills will save his daughter.
The trick was to take the audience on that journey with Mills.

This film may be short, only clocking in at about 90 minutes, but the watch is worth it and any longer probably would have made the chase too depressing with moments of Mills contemplating time with his daughter. Instead we get the action.

Some complain that the film is sexist since most (actually...all) the women in the film are seen as naive and helpless. There are no leading ladies who can tough it out and fend for themselves. But face it when I say that this movie probably wasn't made with women in mind. It was a film written by men for men, and it achieves this purpose. Having a woman come into play halfway through the movie would have added more dramatic scenes that wouldn't be needed, and the absence of seeing the daughter be moved about or trying to escape adds to the mystery of the film. It lets us follow Mills in his search for his daughter without any unnecessary distractions.



This film is really good and definitely worth a watch, though it isn't for the weak hearted since there is lots of fighting and a bit of torture. Most of the enemies remain faceless, leaving no ultimate bad guy for Mills to really go after, yet there is still some semblance of a final fight at the end, which is pretty darn cool.
So in the end, worth the watch.

8.7/10