Taken

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What’s initially so surprising about Taken is how clever it seems to be. A film directed by Pierre Morel (District B-13) and written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (the Transporter series) doesn’t set expectations high, and yet the exposition appears to poise Taken as a sly distillation of the western action film formula.

We have Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), an ex “government operative” who quit killing terrorists to try and build some semblance of a relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Bryan’s ex-wife is an ice queen, Kim’s new stepdad one-ups Bryan’s gift on Kim’s birthday, and Kim really, really wants to go to Paris if only her bio-father will sign a consent form allowing her to travel internationally without a chaperon. If it wasn’t for the general thrust of the plot being given away by text on the movie poster, the setup here would be appropriate for almost any made-for-TV family drama. So when evil Albanians kidnap Kim and Bryan starts burning Paris to the ground to find her, he isn’t doing it for his country, to save thousands of lives from nuclear Armageddon or to solidify democracy in the Middle East. He’s doing it in defense of the heterosexual family unit: that last, unshakable pillar of western society. His icy relationship with his wife and his incredibly brutal methods seem to turn his quest into an absurd joke — one that uses “the action film” as its delivery vehicle.

While Leon the Professional and The Fifth Element prove that — contrary to any evidence from the past decade — cleverness isn’t outside the abilities of Besson or Kamen, Taken only flirts with a higher purpose, never fully embracing one. Any film that attempts to subvert the established truth that violence can solve any problem tends to require the failure or destruction of its protagonist, and Besson, Kamen and Morel are all far too in love with theirs to do anything of the sort. Still, how could you blame them? Neeson has enough avuncular charm to sell his tired motivation most of the time. Besson and Kamen fill his mouth with a surfeit of one-liners that would make Jack Bauer lower his eyes and weep, and Morel won’t ever let a full 10 minutes pass without having his star chop some hapless Albanian in the neck. It’s all great, great fun. Unfortunately, that’s all it is.