Taken on a fast and furious rescue mission
May 23, 2009 by sgt-pembry
Filed under Action, Movie Reviews, Movies, Thriller
Bryan Mills could not have asked for a better way to get his cold-hearted bitch of an ex-wife off his back and at the same time reconnect with his teenage daughter.
In Taken (2008), Mills (Liam Neeson) is a retired CIA operative who must spring back into action in order to save 17-year-old Kim (Maggie Grace) from a holiday from hell in Paris. She has been swiped by a pack of dirty Albanians, who plan to sell her on the black market.
Like the character of Mills, the movie Taken doesn’t mess about. They both get on with the job of presenting an intense, no-holds-barred rescue mission – in quick-time.
Written by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) and directed by Pierre Morel (District 13), Taken lasts barely 80 minutes, but packs a fair amount of punch in into its small running time.
We have the first 20 minutes or so in which everything in Mills’ life, particularly his relationships, is laid out pretty damn clearly.
Mills has quit his life of as a crack ‘preventer’ for the CIA’s elite Special Activities Division purely so he can be close to Kim. He wants to make up for all the time he lost with while on mission after mission.
But things aren’t going so well, with his overbearing ex, Lenore (X-Men’s Famke Janssen), still walking around with a chip on her shoulder, making life difficult for him.
Mills gets badly outdone when it comes to Kim’s birthday, with his present of a karaoke machine paling in comparison to the horsey her wealthy step-dad Stuart (Xander Berkley) buys.
As if rubbing his nose in, Kim then trots around the manicured lawns of Stuart and Lenore’s mansion while receiving a rousing applause from the guests at her party.
It’s all a little cringe-worthy, but is very much the calm before the storm that is Mills, Bryan Mills.
While he may be a little out of touch when it comes to the fathering thing, we soon discover Mills still has what it takes when it comes to seriously kicking some ass. Again, it’s laid out clearly.
Talked into taking on a security gig by his old CIA buddies, Mills must prevent a popstar, Sheerah (Holly Valance), from being attacked by a nut with a knife backstage at one of her concerts. First night back on the job … How’s that for a coincidence?
But, Mills can do nothing though to stop his daughter Kim from jetting off to Paris with her slutty 19-year-old friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) – despite his understandable concerns.
His protests falling on deaf ears, Mills tries to come up with a compromise – “How about this? How about if I go along? You won’t even know I’m there. I’m very good at being invisible” – only for Lenore to but in, “As you so amply demonstrated for the rest of her life.”
He reluctantly signs his spoiled daughter’s consent form, after she and mum him a false spiel about the study she is going to do over there, when in fact she plans on being a groupie for a touring U2.
Yep, Mills, treated like a joke. Used and abused. Much like Kim is about to feel.
Not long after she has touched down in the ‘City of Love’ and arrived at her and friend Amanda’s Parisian apartment, a group of men enter and attack Amanda. Next stop Kim.
Fortunately Mills calls while this is happening, and resigned to the fact she will be ‘taken’, instructs his daughter to leave the phone under the bed and try to describe her abductors to him as best she can, while she can.
She does, before one of the men discovers the cell and simply listens …
A cool, calm and collected Mills tells him … “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.”
The man simply replies, “Good luck”.
Okay, payback time – and to show who’s still the daddy …
That one brilliant moment sets up Mills’ daring, sometimes clever, at times slightly far-fetched and slightly contrived, but always thrilling and entertaining rush to track down the kidnappers using those ‘particular skills’. In particular the karate chop to the side of the neck. Really does the trick.
The ageing, though still imposing Neeson creates a character you just don’t want to mess with – especially if you’ve snatched his one and only child.
He in fact shows he will do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it means crossing the line into anti-hero status, shooting the wife (in the arm) of a former ally but now corrupt French cop or creating a make-shift electric chair to torture in order to obtain information.
“You either give me what I need or this switch will stay on until they turn the power off for lack of payment on the bill”, he says to one unfortunate Albanian.
It is also made clear that time is of the essence, with it being determined by ‘intel’ gathered by an old CIA mate Sam (Leland Orser) that Kim has been kidnapped in order to be sold, and that “… our analyst says you have a 96-hour window from the time she was grabbed … to never finding her.”
Better hurry.
The film could be likened to 24, the hit TV show starring Kiefer Sutherland, but a hell of a lot more brutal and a hell of a lot more pacier.
RATING: 7/10
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