A retired CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has to travel to Paris and use his skills to rescue his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) who has has been kidnapped while on a vacation with her friend by Albanian human traffickers.

This is a film that defined Liam Neeson as an action star, and it created its own genre in a way of Neeson action films. He has that presence that allows this to be somewhat believable. The story is a simple one, but most of what happens is stuff that would probably never happen, but this doesn't stop the film from being enjoyable. I came for the action, not the story. It has the typical American hero, Eastern European bad guys cliché that is so common in action movies nowadays.

The fight scenes for the most part is well choreographed, however the car chases, I found their to be too many cuts too quickly for my liking that made it hard to enjoy. It's a pretty intense movie that starts off slow but really picks up and never slows back down as Neeson runs around Paris kicking ass and leaving bodies.

Taken is a very fun action thriller. I would recommend Taken to any action movie fan; you will have a good time with this one. 7/10.

Random viewing tonight, just wanted a slick and simple action-thriller and this fit the bill. Liam Neeson kicks ass and can see why his career in this genre really took off. The camera work was probably the biggest drawback (shaky cam), likely trying emulate the Bourne franchise or something. But entertaining flick that doesn't overstay its welcome coming in at around 90-minutes. **4.0/5**

**You will find this movie. You will watch it.**

This movie came out of nowhere! The trailer for this film relied on just one short scene of Liam Neeson threatening a kidnapper on the phone... and that was all we needed to be hooked! A basic revenge/rescue movie elevated by fantastic action, stunt directing, and Liam Neeson's delivery, all transporting this thriller into a believable reality. One of the best of the genre that paved the way for John Wick.

Your arrogance offends me.

It is proof positive that you can still have a basic and formulaic genre piece and the multiplex crowd will forgive it the sins of film making. For here we have a revenge thriller that is over reliant on a ream of contrivances? The kind that people scoff at when horror pictures not wanting to be serious get screamed down for?. There is also some pretty poor acting performances on show, the usually reliable Famke Jansen looks lost when asked to show emotion, Maggie Grace needs to go back to acting school, whilst some of the French actors on show give French actors a bad name.

However the true saving grace in the movie, outside of some serious revenge fuelled torture sequences, is Liam Neeson in the lead role of Bryan Mills. Charismatic and believable as a father hell bent on finding the one thing worthwhile that he has in his life, it's only here that Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen's uneven writing gets any sort of urgency to go with the tidily put together action sequences. Taken is an enjoyable film if taken within the context of its genre, and for sure the subject matter of skin trafficking is a noteworthy plot, but no one can surely deny it doesn't have a shallow core and honestly isn't giving anything new to a pretty stagnated formula...

By the by, the thrills ensure popcorn pleasing pleasures and thus it's rated as such. 7/10

Probably not good enough to have started the Revenge-Renaissance that it somehow did, but still a pretty entertaining time. _Taken_ does hit a lot of clichés though, and I mean, it starts hitting them right away. We're literally only minutes into the film before we find out that Neeson's lead character is divorced, and his wife has re-married to a decent, rich provider, but one who's bookish and could never take him in a fight, and that the present he got for his daughter is for an interest that she no longer has. But once we get into the action proper, it's pretty great.

_Final rating:★★★ - I liked it. Would personally recommend you give it a go._