Hermit Cinema: Taken

This is a fairly enjoyable movie that ends up feeling like a hybrid of Tony Scott’s Man on Fire and a Vice City-like video game where you follow one character taking out about a hundred people on the way to achieving his goal.

The story follows Bryan Bills, a typical father (Liam Neeson) who is struggling to reconnect with his just-turned-17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Of course, his efforts and birthday gift can’t seem compete with her stepfather’s fortune or house that looks fresh out of Cribs on MTV. Bryan let his relationship with both wife and daughter disintegrate under the requirements of his job as a highly trained and shadowy government operative.

He’s retired, living in Los Angeles to make up for lost time with his daughter while stuck in constant disagreement with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). His experience overseas has also made him every teenager’s nightmare; seeing boogeymen behind every corner and situation. When Maggie asks if she can go on a trip to Paris, Bryan is only willing to agree if he can come along. He eventually relents. Yet Kim and her traveling companion aren’t in Paris for more than a few minutes before being abducted by mobsters who are making a killing in human trafficking.

From there, Bryan uses all his training and skills to penetrate this unseemly world to get his daughter back. If you’re saying that’s pretty good match for Denzel Washington’s quest to retrieve Dakota Fanning in Man On Fire, I’d say you probably did a whole lot fewer bong hits than I did during my younger years. (That’s a compliment to you, the reader by the way…)

Instead of Dakota Fanning here you get Maggie Grace who doesn’t have much material to work with but comes across so very convincingly as a young, sheltered and suburban teenager. In other words, it’s a different take from her role as Shannon for you LOST fans out there. And instead of Denzel here you get Liam Neeson in a role as physically demanding as Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne. It was refreshing seeing Neeson duke it out hand-to-hand as opposed to Damon and his Robocop physique.

There’s nothing new here. Bad guys are evil. The French are untrustworthy. Pistols can shoot over a hundred bullets without reloading  anytime there’s a gun battle.

That doesn’t make Taken a bad movie. Frankly in my estimation this movie accomplishes everything it set out to do. One thing I give the makers credit for is the length. Too often these days I find myself saying that a movie could have trimmed away about ten or twenty minutes.

You don’t have to think about who is good and who is bad. In fact, you’re not supposed to think about anything. If you’re stuck inside on a rainy day like I was, there’s worst ways to spend ninety minutes your time.

In the end…this movie gets a B-minus.