Taken AKA Liam Neeson Kicks Serious Ass

Taken is the rare movie that, with few exceptions, completely knows its place and what it was trying to accomplish. Namely, Liam Neeson's unabashed non-stop Schmorgas board of justified kick-assery, which was completely satisfying and, might I add, delicious.

The other great part about the movie is how easy it is to sum up: Liam Neeson's daughter is kidnapped and then he goes ape shit and kills everyone.

Oh, you want more details even though you've probably seen the movie if you're reading this? OK: Liam's 17 year old daughter begs him for permission to travel to Europe with her friend. Although paranoid, Liam agrees and then, of course, the daughter is immediately kidnapped by crazy Albanians that pick off hot naive young girls traveling alone, then get them addicted to drugs and sell them as sex slaves. Liam Neeson, who apparently had some crazy government job where he was trained to not only be able to kill people basically just by looking at them, but also to be so incredibly confident in this ability that he never feels the need to carry a gun, goes to get her back. Needless to say, Liam goes to town on all the Albanians and absolutely destroys them trying to get his daughter back.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

He gets her back. And then there's a terrible cheesy ending tag that makes you want to punch whatever producer/director/writer argued to leave that shit in.

Overall, if you don't think to much about it, the movie was awesome. Liam Neeson's character is given the best justification ever to go on a insanely violent rampage on anyone's face who tries to prevent him from getting to his daughter. If anyone seems to die without feeling a great deal of pain, its disappointing. Maybe it's my future paternal instinct, but Neeson could of literally started castrating the bad guys and then cut off their limbs and fed them to sharks with rabies and I would have been 100% behind it. It doesn't nearly go that far but he does some awesome bad ass shit and it's awesome. When I saw it, there were about 4 times when some particularly gnarly badassery on Neeson's part was rewarded with a round of applause from the audience

If you do, however, think about it, you realize that the movie plays into a pretty ignorant xenophobia. Neeson's daughter is taken in Paris by crazy Albanians who the French apparently can't control and then sold to a Sheik. Translation: the French are weak. Eastern Europeans are evil. Arabs are disgusting. On the other hand, Americans are either completely ignorant and naive, or completely paranoid. I guess some stereotypes are based in truth. The movie also doesn't really delve to deeply in any kind of helpful way into the very VERY real issue of human trafficking (for more info on that go here, here or here).

Overall, the action was really entertaining and well put together, the pacing was great, the writing was fine, but I think it was Liam Neeson that really elevated the movie beyond the sort of predictable action flick that it really is at the core. An action star wouldn't have quite sold the absolute torture that Neeson's character felt every second his daughter wasn't safe.

Love to hear anyone else's thoughts!