Taken 2008 Movie Review

Taken movie with Liam Neeson

I LOVED Taken the movie!!  Heard in the grapevine that it was quite a good movie but obviously you want to watch it to make your own mind up and I was not disappointed!!

Mainly due to Liam Neeson character, Bryan Mills!  He was absolutely perfect for the role!  Loved this guy in many previous movies such as The Haunted, Batman Begins (played by the best Batman actor to date – Christian Bale!) amongst others and he really brought something new to this type of movie.

Taken is about a father (Liam Neeson) trying to rebuild connections with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) with whom he was unable to share much time with whilst she was growing up.  Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) was a CIA operative and was away from his family for months on end, unable to keep in touch at times, causing his marriage to Lenore (Famke Janssen – Jean Grey/Phoenix from X-Men) to fail.  

Lenore now married to rich guy Stuart (Xander Berkeley) who typically in this type of movie, is set to show Bryan up unintentially – Bryan buys Kim a karaoke machine which she loves, where Stuart then presents her with her own horse….  Big gifts over gifts that actually mean something!  Kim wanting to be a singer!  Queue Holly Valance as singer, Sheerah – Bryan and his ex-CIA pals at the beginning of this movie are hired to be her bodyguards and after Bryan saves Sheerah from a maniac “fan” she is indebted to him and agrees to meet up with his daughter Kim to chat about becoming a famous singer.

Lunch date set by Bryan with Kim, he intends to give her the best gift possible, Sheerah’s contact details.  Unfortunately it was Kim’s intentions to let her dad know that she wants to move to France with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) to visit museums and live the French life for a while…  Bryan is disappointed as a consent form is thrust at him.  He understands that the world is not a nice place and is very worried for his daughter’s wellbeing.  Bryan gives his blessing but not before making sure she follows a few rules – keep this mobile phone close, ring as soon as she gets to France and informs him of all of her moves, where and whom she is staying with and rings him each night before bed. 

Of course, when she gets to France, Kim and Amanda are about to be kidnapped by Albanian’s from their apartment, literally before they have even set down their bags.  This is where the movie started to really interest me!!! It wasn’t just about a father’s ordeal of his daughter being kidnapped – it went further than that!!  His CIA training instincts immediately kick in during the last telephone conversation with Kim whilst Amanda is being bundled by the kidnapping Albanians.  They don’t cry down the phone to each other, or end up with Bryan screaming “LEAVE MY DAUGHTER ALOOOOOOONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” etc etc more that he says “these are the most important 15 seconds of your life Kim!  Now listen very carefully!  These men will take you!  But what you do will change the outcome (obviously I am paraphrasing!) I want you to hide under the bed and leave the phone on the floor.  When they take you, I want you to shout out a description of the men, height, weight, skin colour, hair, tattoos etc…”.  This is what caught my attention – the writers/producers of this movie have actually thought about Bryan’s character and made him into a mean thinking machine who wasn’t just about shooting the baddies or threatening them, he could actually use his brain to get to his daughter and it was believable and quite clever really! 

Liam Neeson is such a fantastic actor and am very glad that LoveFilm.com posted the Taken DVD to me.

Movie review by Zora Rajsic