Quite Taken...with Liam Neeson

Try to imagine Jason Bourne tackling a human trafficking ring, Law and Order: SVU style. You know how he'd do it: outwitting the bad guys, beating everyone senseless, limping through his pain, and driving unsafely through very crowded cities. Age Jason about twenty years and give him a cute, naive, teenage daughter, and all of a sudden, you've got Pierre Morel's taut action flick, Taken.

The ever-reliable Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, a retired "preventer," whose devotion to his government post broke up his marriage to Lenore (played as essence of bitch by Famke Janssen) and left him longing for a closer bond with his lovely daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). So to patch up the fractured family dynamic, Bryan has moved closer to his ex-wife and kid to try to be the daddy his job wouldn't let him be. The man does his best to be a good father: buys Kim a thoughtful birthday gift, encourages her dreams of being a singer, taking her birthday photos on his cheap disposable camera, and tries to keep her out of trouble. But none of that is good enough for silly Kim or her hag of a mother. Oh no. Somebody thinks it's a good idea to ship off two attractive American girls to live in Paris for the summer without adult supervision. With all those years doing shady stuff for the government, Bryan knows better, but Lenore bullies him and Kim cries him into giving his permission to send his only daughter abroad.

So off goes Kim with her slutbag gal pal Amanda (Katie Cassidy). Because she's a slutbag, Amanda doesn't think twice about lying to her best friend, splitting a cab with a complete stranger (who just happens to be a French hottie), giving out the address of her cousins' posh apartment to said French hottie, and planning to fornicate with said French hottie in a matter of hours. Virginal Kim, on the other hand, immediately recognizes the utter stupidity of the wanton wench and berates her for her impulses. Frustrated, she goes to call her daddy, whom she should have called hours before; meanwhile, thugs from a human trafficking operation have broken into the apartment to snatch the two beauties. Naughty naughty Amanda goes first, while Kim watches in horror, explaining every detail to Bryan before they come for her, too.

When you're an ex-government operative type, you've still got all your connections and gadgetry years after you're no longer doing the job. Armed with a recording, a network of knowledgeable pals, and "a very particular set of skills" that would make even Jason (Bourne, if you didn't follow) a little envious, Bryan heads off to Europe to find and kill whoever did...whatever to his precious daughter. Now that you've made him angry, wearied Bryan is going to hunt some folks down and leave some unspeakable carnage in his wake. And getting to see that legendary skill set at work is a thing of beauty. Unsafe driving. Torture. Fist fights. Knives. Guns. All the stuff you love about every action movie you've ever seen, executed to perfection by Liam Neeson. And unlike the Bourne movies (...it always comes back to Jason, folks), the action scenes are shot and edited in such a way that one can actually tell pretty much everything that's happening.

Since Lauren already drew attention to the fact that there are some Star Wars parallels to be made, I may as well mention them. Check out the scene on the yacht and see if you're not thinking about Jabba the Hutt lusting after Leia in her gold bikini. You will. I know you will. You pervert. It actually kind of threw me a little; I'd been really engrossed in the action for the last forty-five minutes or so, and all of a sudden, I was in a galaxy far, far away. And in the worst of all of them, too, God help me.

Technically, more plot stuff unfolds after Bryan gets started on mission of massacreing mayhem (oh, such mayhem!), but none of that's really relevant here. Ultimately, this is an R-ish thriller about a BAMF and his skills. Period. See it. Love it. Don't flirt with French hotties.

-Katie