Taken, or why you should never let your kids travel abroad

I'm tired so this will be really short, as it should be. I saw Taken tonight with Alyssa and Katie. Liam Neeson, as usual, is amazing. I want him to be my father. Between this and his role in Love Actually, he's the best father ever. 

I can't really say much about this, because I don't want to give much away. Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, who is part Jason Bourne, part Craig's Bond. He's basically made of awesome. The plot is fairly strait forward. Mills is a retired government agent of some sort. He's trying to forge a relationship with his teenage daughter, played by Maggie Grace, who surprisingly looks much younger than her actual age. Daughter goes to Paris on vacation. Daughter gets kidnapped by human traffickers. Father rains down ungodly hell on Parisian underworld on quest to find daughter. Pierre Morel does a great job of capturing every glorious minute. The fight scenes are nicely shot, and have non of the shaky footage that plagues the Bourne movies. The characters are believable, if somewhat underdeveloped. Make no mistake, there is no character growth. This movie is about Liam Neeson beating the crap out of everybody. The theater I saw it in was almost full, and the audience loved it. They cheered every moment. The violence was great, pushing that PG-13 rating as much as it could. I've heard rumors of an unrated directors cut, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. 

Sure, sometimes you question what you see. There's a final bit on the boat that I'm sure Katie will mention. She made some comparisons between it and certain Leia and Jabba the Hut moments in Star Wars. It's also very clear that if Liam Neeson hadn't been so lucky in a few instances, he would have been completely screwed. It would have been nice to have explored some characters more and to have given more time to some of the character relationships. But you have to understand, I'm being picky.

All in all, this is a solid action flick. Parents are probably going to be a lot more paranoid about their child's proposed trip to Europe, so beware bringing one's parents to this movie if you are a student/teenager. Regardless, definitely better than most movies in theaters that haven't been nominated, so check it out if the Oscar buzz isn't your thing. Check it out even if it is your thing. Liam Neeson is great. I can't wait to see what Maggie Grace does next, especially since I wrote her off as an uninteresting actress following her somewhat one-note performance on LOST. Most of all, I can't wait to see what Pierre Morel and Luc Besson do next.

Trailer can be found here.

Wow I ramble when I'm tired. Definitely rewriting this later. 

~Lauren