I have been Taken by suprise! (Taken [2008] (DVD))

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	Taken [2008] (DVD)
Date:	06/11/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great storyline, and good character performaces.

Disadvantages: None.

We watched this film with my mum, dad and husband when they had it recorded on Sky Plus and nothing was on tv (once again it was a Wednesday night and it was just football which was on!!!!). As I have said before when writing reviews on these types of films, I've never been a big fan of films with guns and gangsters, they bore me most of the time, but this Thriller is actually quite good!

Details
*Directed By- Pierre Morel
*Release Date- 26 September 2008
*Genre- Action/Thriller
*Certification- 15 (UK)
*Runtime- 93 minutes
*Starring-
Liam Neeson
Maggie Grace
Plot

When ex CIA agent Bryan's 17 year old daughter Kim wants to go to Paris with her best friend from school, her dad is apprehensive, whilst her laid back mum (and Bryans ex wife), is fine with it, pressuring him into signing the papers to allow her out of the country. As an ex CIA agent, he knows the dangers of the world, and knows the trouble 17 year old girls can get caught up in. But he eventually relents to keep his daughter happy, the reason he left his job, the reason he moved from him home to be near her. It's not long though until he finds out that his daughter is not really going to Paris but following U2's concert around Europe, although her mother knows this, they have all lied to Bryan, but it's too late to say no now...they're about to check-in.
Of course the two pretty young girls end up meeting a young man at Paris Charles de Gaule airport, who offers to share a cab with them to a family apartment in Paris, where they're going to be staying alone. Telling this stranger all about this, and agreeing he will pick them up on their floor at 8 that night for a party.

With Bryan trying to call his daughter after hearing nothing since her landing, and Kim dancing around the apartment to the music without a care in the world, she and her friend have no idea what is to come. Eventually Kim finds her phone has hundreds of missed calls from her protective father and runs to the bathroom to call him back, where she can see her friend having fun running around and dancing, but as she's on the phone something terrible happens...as she sees a group of men come into the living room and snatch her, hiding in the bathroom on the other side of the building, she tells her father what is happening and he does all he can to keep her calm and set up what he can do beforehand to find out afterwards what happened and who took her.
He goes on a whild chase around Paris searching for the men responsible for taking his daughter from him, using his skills from the CIA to help him along the way, getting caught up in the prositution and drugs ring with gansgters and pimps galore. But will he find his daughter and her friend in one piece, or will the men have done what they want with them and disposed of them accordingly!


Opinion of Story

The story is quite good, but I think it's better to watch than it sounds in principal or than it would be to read in a book, as the action kind of packs it out in the film, whilst the storyline could have been quite boring with the reasoning behind the girl's disappearance coming out very soon into the film, and although we don't really know until the end if she'll be found alive or not, the storyline does develop very quickly, which can make a film very boring, but this one is packed full of action scenes and drama to keep you going right through til the end!

I thought the story was great and there wasn't a moment during the film where I thought oh jeez is this film ever going to end like you do with some films. The film starts with Bryan and his friends working Security for a singer at a concert, when she is hit upon by a group of fans, and a fanatic with a knife, Bryan saves her, rushing her to safety and doing some great fighting moves on the guy with the knife. Giving us a quick insight into his type of work he used to do, and gave us the impression he was the type of man you do NOT mess with if you want to come out of it alive.
The film has alot of violence in it, but its't particularly bloody thirsty, just a lot of fighting and gun fire, which I don't usually like, but in this it didn't bother me as it fitted well with the film.

Unlike other films like this there are no romantic qualities to the film, alot of the time there will be an ex husband and wife, who "hate" each other at the start of the film but by the end of it they're back to been wildly in love with each other, but not with this, I liked this aspect of the film, as it was more realistic that Bryan was searching for his daughter and had nothing else on his mind, he couldn't care less about anything but her and getting her home safely.
A great storyline and really keeps you interested all the way through! If you like Action Thrillers then you'll enjoy Taken!


Characters and Performances

The performaces by the actors in the film are great, they can't be faulted at all. There's nothing particularly excellent to talk about, nobody stands out as spectacular but it's all good, and there is nothing bad to talk about either!

The fighting scenes with Liam Neeson are great, I'm not sure if he used a stunt double, but it's all great anyway!!

All in All

The film is great, if your a big action thriller you'll love this film.The story line is gripping and exciting,but my husband wasn't a big fan and found it a little boring until around halfway through, when the killing and fighting started. But everyone else in my family enjoyed it, so my husband is probably just a fussy sod!!!

Summary: A great Action Thriller!