Taken

Though the "father in pursuit of kidnapped child" story has been played out many times in front of movie cameras, Taken approaches the tale with a brutal, single-minded intensity that sets it amongst the very best in the action/revenge genre. After retiring from C.I.A. service to rebuild a relationship with his estranged teenage daughter (Maggie Grace), Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is reluctant to allow her to vacation in Paris unsupervised. Bryan's worst fears are quickly realized when his daughter is kidnapped by a gang of Albanian slave traders, forcing him to bring all his secret agent skills to bear on the bad guys and save his daughter from a life of slavery, addiction and torture. On the surface Taken might seem like just another silly action movie but Liam Neeson's portrayal of an ex-C.I.A. agent on the warpath in search of his abducted daughter is one of the most gratifyingly fierce, morally ambiguous characters ever caught on film. With pit-bull intensity Neeson punches, kicks and shoots his way through a seemingly endless procession of bad guys, giving no quarter and never wavering from his goal. Neeson single-handedly holds the audience's attention throughout most of the picture, using his acting talent and the physical skills he's acquired over a long career in action movies to kick more ass than Commando and Payback combined. The DVD features both the theatrical release and the unrated director's cut, with all the wonderfully brutal violence intact. The special features are sparse, with a typically dull "Making of," a "side by side comparison" that shows the film's raw footage next to the finished product and two commentary tracks, one by writer Robert Mark Kamen and the other featuring the director and cinematographer speaking French, with subtitled English translations, making it something for hardcore film students only. Taken is a must-see for anyone who has ever enjoyed an action movie or vowed revenge on an international criminal organization but didn't know where to start.