Here is a movie that knows what it is and gets down to business. TAKEN is a revenge/
action picture that has a believable star in the role as dangerous former government
agent drawn back into the career he left behind. Sure, this story has been told hundreds
of times before, but the point of these movies, at least for me, is in the execution and
understanding of the genre. The setup is simple. Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA badass
who left the business to develop a relationship with his estranged 17-year old daughter.
She travels abroad against his wishes, him knowing how dangerous the world is, and she
gets kidnapped by a sex slave operation. So there's the setup, no ludicrous and crazy
gimmicks here. It's more like a throwback to movies like Raw Deal or Commando, which got on with the action and vengeance instead of trying to plumb the depths of a new cheap gimmick as an excuse to do an action movie.
Taken or the aforementioned movies may not be 'believable' in the traditional sense, but
compared to the two trailers before the movie which showed the execrable Jason Statham as an action hero who has to jumpstart his artificial heart because it can only last an hour
without juice, or the new John Cena vehicle 12 Rounds which depicts the current scourge
of action flicks - the evil genius bad guy making the hero jump through hoops and do
stupid stuff for some silly reason over a cell phone - it's refreshingly simple in its
premise:
1. Bad guys take person good guy loves most
2. Bad guys screwed up because...
3. Good guy is a hardcase
On the execution front, Liam Neeson is king-sized in this actioner. The first rule of
any action movie is to have a believable actor in the role. Liam Neeson is a great
actor. He doesn't have to do great acting in this, obviously, but he's been in this type of
movie before and knows the drill. He was the redneck angel of death in Next of Kin, an
otherwise forgettable action flick due to Patrick Swayze being the main hero. Neeson
brings credibility, intensity, and a physical presence to this role. The trailer for
Taken is almost the entire phone conversation between Neeson and the unfortunate bad guy who kidnapped his daughter. You feel bad for the bad guy, such is Neeson's matter of fact delivery of his 'special set of skills.' From this point on in the film, Neeson is
a relentless force of nature on the streets of Paris. The fight scenes are good, though
still framed too tight for my taste. Worlds better than the ridiculous fight scenes, or
shall I say obfuscation of the cherubic Matt Damon's fight credibility seen in the Bourne
set of movies. Good Will Kung-Fuing this is not.
Most of all, it's fun while still taking itself seriously which almost never happens in
action movies anymore. Some of the scenes are masterful in depicting how deadly and
fired up Neeson's character is. He's the second coming of Sonny Chiba's temper married
with Takeshi Kitano's cold-blooded efficiency. The payoff scene to the initial cell
phone call towards the end of the film, where Neeson walks into a room full of baddies
and pinpoints the guy who told him "good luck" at the end of that call is
fantastic. Some of the fun of these movies is wondering how much of a badass will this
guy be? That scene answers that question pretty well. These guys screwed up. Big time.
