Taken (2009)

*1/2 out of ****

Liam Neeson is a badass for whom I hold an unabashed adoration. Action flick, comedy, or drama, I'll watch it just because Liam Neeson is in it. Plus... I mean, the man did voice acting for Fallout 3. How can you not love that?

Now that we've established my near worshipful feelings for Mr. Neeson, you can understand how excited I was when I first saw the previews for Taken. Action movie starring Liam Neeson - and it gets better - written by Luc Besson! My favorite movie genre with one of my favorite actors. Umm... yes please? This caused me to overlook a few things that should have been glaringly obvious.

Premise: CIA spook Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has retired from government service to attempt to rebuild a relationship with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). Kim runs off to Paris for summer vacation with a friend, and while on the phone with her father, is kidnapped by an organization of slavers specializing in forcing girls into prostitution. Bryan flies to Paris and comes down on the organization like the wrath of God in single minded pursuit of his daughter's kidnappers.

Okay. Liam Neeson was fantastic, as always. And this movie had a lot of really great elements. Fight scenes that were well choreographed and filmed, great one-liners, satisfying explosions... it was an action movie. But honestly, if I didn't like Liam Neeson so much, I'd be slamming this movie a hell of a lot harder.

This all goes back to my very strong feelings about torture in entertainment (yeah, I know I couple of you are saying I told you so). Once again, the "good guy" - loving father just desperate to get his daughter back - resorts to torture to gain information that he needs. Without even batting an eye.

Now, my feelings about this one are complicated. What wouldn't you do to get your child back from a ring of slavers? Especially if you had already found a trailer full of drugged girls prepared to be raped, and were imagining your daughter going through the same thing? Would you electrocute a man into telling you what you need to know to find her? Unfortunately the scene is treated cavalierly and no consequences are presented, as usual, and the end of the scene is shockingly brutal.

Actually, there are scenes throughout the entire film that are shockingly brutal. From his apparent complete lack of compassion when in the trailer with the bound and drugged women, to the torture scene, to his shooting an innocent woman in the arm ("It's a flesh wound. But if you don't get me what I need, the last thing you'll see before I make your children orphans is the bullet I put between her eyes"), it all adds up to his character being a single minded, unfeeling monster. Not a good way to portray your main character.

The last thing that left me with a sour taste in my mouth was the complete lack of any sort of attempt to put a stop to the women trafficking. Maybe there was something that got left on the editing room floor, but the film left you with the impression that Liam Neeson saved his daughter and just decided to pretend he didn't know about the fact that young girls were being kidnapped, drugged, raped, and forced into prostitution. "Lalalala, I have my daughter back, all is well in the world, wheeeee!"

It was disappointing. This movie had great potential, but smothered all the good things it had going for it with a cold, mostly unlikeable main character (he was adorable and sweet for the first fifteen minutes) and a profoundly unsatisfying ending.

"If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."