Taken takes the cake

By Faheem Ahmed     1/29/09 6:00pm

If someone asked me who my favorite action star was, I'd conjure up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger smearing cakes of mud across his chest in Predator, Bruce Willis walking barefoot across broken glass in Die Hard and Keanu Reeves dodging bullets on a rooftop in The Matrix. But Liam Neeson? The dude from Schindler's List and the voice of that goofy lion from Narnia? No way. After watching Taken, however, I was forced to reconsider.Neeson has acted in dramatic films for the majority of his prolific career, with brief stints in the action genre in Batman Begins and Gangs of New York. His last major foray in an action movie dates all the way back to his critically-acclaimed performance in Rob Roy, over 13 years ago. For Neeson, apparently, the wait had been long enough.

Taken is a purebred action movie, injected with high adrenaline and heart-stopping fight sequences from start to finish. Neeson plays ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills, whose obsessive dedication to the job has resulted in a divorce from his wife, played by Famke Janssen (X-Men's Jean Grey), and in an estranged relationship with his daughter, played by Maggie Grace ("Lost"'s Shannon). After retiring, Mills decides to spend more time with his daughter and less time chasing bad guys around the world.

There's just one catch: Sex traffickers abduct Mills' daughter in Paris and give him only a 90-hour window in which to find her. In summary, Neeson spends the remainder of the film on a rampage throughout Europe, crushing bones, dislocating shoulders and beating the crap out of everyone and everything that stands in his path.

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Taken is reminiscent of classic action movies of the mid-nineties, like Face/Off and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which plot and character development take a backseat to badassery and pure awesomeness. One of my biggest pet peeves is when movies, especially in the action and horror genres, take themselves too seriously and attempt to pass themselves off as emotional dramas. People aren't buying tickets to these movies to have epiphanies or to be inspired. They want to be entertained, dammit! And Taken does exactly that. It is fast-paced, has a decent enough plot line and, most importantly, is a lot of fun.

My only criticism of this movie is Maggie Grace's performance as Neeson's supposedly teenage daughter. Actresses often play roles much younger than their actual age. In this case, Grace, 25, is playing a 17-year-old. Somehow, she infuses her character with such idiocy and immaturity that she comes off as a severely handicapped fourth grader rather than an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood. I actually felt kind of relieved when the sex traffickers kidnapped her.

One of the best parts of this movie is that the fight scenes are shown to the audience clearly and in focus. I'm so tired of the shaky camera effect applied in the Bourne movies and the Bond reboots. I want to appreciate the martial arts without getting an aneurysm.

Pierre Morel, who directed the first and best Transporter, and Luc Besson, the writer of the superb Professional, team up to release a refreshing action flick that reveals the gritty underbelly of Western Europe and the dangers of traveling alone. Neeson is the shining star of the show, and I recommend you watch this in theaters if you want to see some good ol' asskicking.

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