taken movie poster

Karin and I have actually been making a concerted effort these days to get back into the theaters and see films on the big screen (I know, this idea becomes increasingly more novel every day, but there you go;)

The other night, we caught Taken, largely because of convenient movie times and other various and sundry scheduling conflicts. I’m glad we did. Had I known that Luc Besson was involved with the film, I probably would have put it on my list, anyway. Besson’s leadership in the very French Cinema du Look movement of recent years has given us some fairly slick and apolitical fare, and come on: Who doesn’t like Jason Statham in the Transporter flicks?

There’s not much to spoil here, so I’ll just jump right in. Taken is an action thriller that begins slowly and, while it doesn’t ratchet up to a fever pitch, certainly becomes a good, solid (if linear and predictable) offering filled with all the seedy revenge-fueled adrenaline a bunch of human-trafficking Albanians, as they are picked off one by one (or in some cases, several at a time) by our protagonist, in search of his innocent seventeen year old daughter, can generate.

Because that’s pretty much the story, you see. Retired CIA “preventer” (that’s the job title Neeson gives his daughter as they drive to the airport) leaves the dirty underbelly of the espionage world to live close to his daughter, trying to make up for the years he was ostensibly away from from home making the world safer for other people’s seventeen year-old daughters. But of course, as soon as his little girl arrives in Paris on a summer trip with her friend, she is kidnapped by a ring of human traffickers. And as Neeson says to one of the kidnappers via his daughter’s cell phone: “I will find you, and I will kill you.” Which he commences to do, very ably and admirably, and in a very Luc Besson-like manner. Neeson’s character shows little pity; he simply gets the job done, leaving a trail of slaughtered Albanians and Arabs in his wake. In one particularly effective scene, he shoots his old friend’s wife in the arm at dinner to get the information he needs, claiming, “It’s just a flesh wound.” In the interest of full disclosure, his friend HAD become a corrupt police desk jockey, but still…

In the final analysis, Taken works. It does what it sets out to do, and it does it with some degree of style. Besson co-wrote the script, and it shows in the way the film, once it gets moving, continues its forward motion right on through to the end. Neeson has a good, undertstated charisma that feels particularly suited to the role, and its because of him that we as audience members feel the payoff so profoundly. Considering I hadn’t heard much about film prior to seeing it, I was more than pleasantly surprised. I’d recommend it to any fan of Besson’s, or to anyone who enjoys a good revenge thriller with a fairly minimal plot. And after all, sometimes we just need to watch this sort of thing to blow off some personal steam, right? I know I certainly do.