Review – Taken

Clearly this is a brazen attempt to produce a movie that cashes in on the whole 24 thing. Liam Neeson plays an ex-CIA operative whose daughter is kidnapped in Paris by Albanian mobsters who intend to sell her into sexual slavery. And if you’re sitting there wondering why criminals from Central Europe would risk snatching wealthy American kids from France rather than tap into their own native stock of desperate women seeking escape from crushing poverty, please accept my assurance that this is nowhere near the most implausible element of the picture. Indeed, try as one might to accept the drama on its own terms, the plot sinks rapidly under a pile of “why would he …” and “a CIA guy would never …” and the like. Sure, some of the bad-guy-torturing and general kung-fu-ing is fun in a Jack Bauer sort of way. But if you have an itch for a tough-guy-in-pursuit-of-kidnapped-girl picture, Man on Fire does a better job of scratching. Mildly amusing