I was taken with this film (Taken [2008] (DVD))

Member Name: Benjiboo

Product:	Taken [2008] (DVD)
Date:	27/08/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gritty fighting and lots of it

Disadvantages: Pedictable story

This is a 15 rated action/thriller 80 minutes in length. There is some bad language and a lot of violence, some of which is very graphic.

This is co-written by Luc Besson (Leon, The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita TV series and The Transporter) and the lead role of Bryan Mills is played by Liam Neeson (no need to explain who he is). There are a couple of other familiar faces in this:

Kim (Bryan's daughter) - Maggie Grace - Shannon from Lost
Lenore (Bryan's ex-wife) - Famke Jansen - Jean Grey, X-Men
Sheerah (a singing superstar) - Holly Valance - Neighbours and singer of Kiss Kiss (In my opinion she has been off our screens for far too long and it was a pleasant surprise that she popped up in this.)

Bryan is a divorced, retired CIA agent with a 17 year old daughter, Kim. Despite her dad's reservations Kim decides to go on holiday with a friend to Paris. On arriving in Paris Kim and her friend are kidnapped - whilst she is on the phone to her dad. Bryan learns that she will be sold into the sex trade and if he does not find her within 96 hours he is likely never to see her again. He goes to Paris and uses his particular skills and contacts to rescue his daughter.

Although there are a number of familiar faces this is essentially a one man show: Liam Neeson has most of the screen time. This has about 25 minutes of build up which allows us to get to know the characters and so there is, just a small amount, of emotional investment. Once the story gets going it really takes off: there is a steady flow of action with some investigative work thrown in to keep from just being a typical crash-bang-wallop film. I was very impressed with the action sequences in this: there are some shoot-outs a couple of chases and most of all there is some seriously gritty hand-to-hand combat. This film had be going "oh, damn that's going to hurt". It made me see Liam Neeson in a whole new light: he played a convincing hard-man whilst still portraying the emotion of situation.

The storyline for this film is predictable - there are no twists and there are no sub-plots - this said, for me, the balance of story and action was just right. It must be pointed out although this is an action/thriller I would say it's 90% action and only 10% thriller: don't watch it if you like an intelligent film.

The DVD special features are bit lame: they are the showing of the premiere (which is mostly in French), the making of the film and some weird "inside action" which just seems to show small action clips from an alternative angle.

Summary: Loved it - hard hitting action film.