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Taken Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language) Genre: Action, Thriller Theater release: January 30, 2009 by 20th Century Fox Directed by: Pierre Morel Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes Cast: Liam Neeson (Bryan Mills), Maggie Grace (Kim), Famke Janssen (Lenore), Olivier Rabourdin (Jean-Claude), Holly Valance (Sheerah), Xander Berkeley (Stuart) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

When 17-year-old Kim Mills asks her father for permission to spend three weeks in Paris with a girlfriend to visit museums, he's reluctant to consent. A retired CIA covert paramilitary operative, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) sees the world as a dangerous place—too dangerous for a pair of 17-year-olds more or less on their own in a city like Paris.

"Mom says your job made you paranoid," Kim (Maggie Grace) says almost shyly.

"My job made me aware," Bryan answers.

Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills

Awareness is a relative quality; there is such a thing as being too aware. Paranoia may be an occupational hazard for black-ops agents, but the same may be true for film critics, or even moviegoers with a diet of too many action movies. Many of us, over-exercised by media sensationalism and TV and movie violence, habitually overestimate the extent to which we are at risk on a day-to-day basis. One may start to feel that imminent danger lurks around every corner, that every passer-by is a potential assailant.

Novelist David Foster Wallace described how pornography sexualizes real life by creating a narrative world in which sex is always a heartbeat away. In a similar way, thrillers like The Brave One and Man on Fire, in which violent crime is always a heartbeat away, may be a kind of violence porn. Where other movies—Die Hard, say—deliberately depict highly exceptional and extraordinary circumstances, these movies depict terrifying crimes as the norm—as what is likely to happen at any time to anyone.

Directed by Luc Besson protégé Pierre Morel (District B13) and produced and co-written by Besson, Taken is slicker and smarter than that. Although well-crafted but improbable action set pieces cast the 56-year-old Neeson as an essentially indomitable force taking on and prevailing against almost any number of gun-toting assailants—like Jason Bourne, Bryan combines boundless resourcefulness with essentially indomitable physical prowess—the film's emotional force rests on the comparatively persuasive setup.

Maggie Grace as Kim

Although Bryan's worst fears are realized almost immediately as Kim and Amanda are abducted by Paris's Albanian mafia within hours of their arrival, they aren't just snatched off the street or randomly assaulted after making a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood. A gangland spotter targets them at the airport, makes friendly conversation, offers to share a cab, and finds out where they are staying. The lesson, then, is not so much that cities like Paris are treacherous sinkholes of depravity, like the Mexico City of Man on Fire, as it is "Be careful who you talk to and who you trust."

While a hero galvanized into action by a threat to a family member such as a daughter or a wife is the oldest device in the book, Bryan's family life isn't the idyllic domestic happiness other heroes enjoy. He's divorced and alone, his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Jenssen) is remarried to a wealthy businessman named Stuart (Xander Berkeley), and he barely knows Kim.

As the film opens, Bryan, in the hope of building bridges to Kim, has retired from the job that cost him his marriage and took him away from his daughter. In addition to an action-revenge movie, then, Taken is a redemption story of sorts. Bryan may not have been there for Lenore or for Kim when she was growing up, and he might not be able to compete with Stuart when it comes to lavish birthday presents—but when Kim is abducted, it's Daddy's turn to make good, in spades.

Bryan and ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) don't always see eye-to-eye

Unfortunately, Bryan's paternal redemption is marred by excursions into gratuitous torture and even overt terrorism. In one scene, even after a thug spills all he knows after a couple of excruciating bouts with electroshock torture, Bryan leaves him strapped down with the power on. Later, confronting a corrupt government official over dinner with his wife, Bryan shoots the unsuspecting wife in the leg—and threatens to kill them both—unless the official gives him what he wants. "Please apologize to your wife for me," Bryan curtly says later, but there are some things you can't apologize for, especially when you aren't sorry.

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