Taken

For those of you who live in Europe and have somehow heard of this blog, Taken is old news. For those of us who live the States, its fresh meat.

Taken was one of few movies that I was getting really hyped about, because who doesn't like the idea of a feature film length clip of Liam Neeson kicking ass? I'll tell you who. Nobody. So when I finally got to see Taken, I was quite happy. And even as I was watching it, lines of excellent things I could say in this blog were running through my head.

Lets start off with a list of things I learned by watching this film.

• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if you do not have a gun, as his hands are actually more deadly than a blast of steam to the face.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if you do have a gun, as he will take it from you and shoot you with it.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if there are any surfaces nearby, as he can use these to kill you.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if you have arms or legs because he can grab them and use them to control you.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if you have ribs, because he knows how to shove them into your lungs.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if thirty other guys have your back, because he will kill them too.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if he is handcuffed to a pipe on the ceiling, because he will still kill you.
• Do not attempt to fight Liam Neeson if he is in a car, because he can do some crazy car tricks.
• Every single car in France is made by Jeep.
• It is acceptable to drive through a trailer if you honk politely first.
• Even when his attention is riveted on a boat and he is driving against traffic, Liam Neeson is a better driver than anyone I know.

These facts clearly demonstrate that Liam Neeson is way more badass than Chuck Norris, and possibly even more badass than Clint Eastwood.

But on to the movie itself. Liam Neeson is Brian Mills, and his daughter is turning 17. Woo. Yeah. Oh, and he's divorced, and his ex-wife is now married to a super-rich multi-national oil tycoon or something. One of the guys who you love to hate.

After the party, some of Brian's old friends come over, and they have a barbeque, and he gets invited to help with security for some super-rich singer. He says hey, what the heck, and goes along for the ride. After the show, some shit goes down, and Brian has to escort the singer back to the vehicle. On the way, they are ambushed by a whackjob with a knife, who promptly gets his ass handed to him by Brian. I think he might have died, because I'm pretty sure his ribcage got crushed.

The next day, the singer decides to help him by giving him information to give to his daughter, who wants to become a singer. Brian is pleased about this, and plans to share this information with his daughter at lunch the next day. At said lunch, he is ambushed by his ex-wife and a form to sign, allowing his daughter to go to Paris. He says he'll think about it, and everyone gets upset and leaves.

He eventually signs the papers and lays down some conditions. He drives her to the airport, where he notices some scribblings on a map and finds out the trip to Paris is actually just the beginning of a trip to follow U2 all over Europe for their tour. Wait, what? Why follow U2? They're not even any good anymore.

Oh right, so anyway, his ex-wife convinces him to let her go, and then in Paris, Kim (Brian's daughter) and her friend meet a guy, share a cab with him, and then comes the part you've all seen in the previews. Kim's friend gets kidnapped by a human traffiking group, and then the phone conversation I'm sure many of you know very well.

So Brian sends some data to his friends to get data in return, and goes and tells his ex-wife and her husband whats happened. He gets a flight to Paris, knowing he has 96 hours to find Kim before she's lost forever.

He finds the apartment, demonstrates his incredible skills of postcognition, and recovers a microSD card from Kim's smashed phone. With this card, he is able to get a picture of the guy who shared the cab with them and called in the human traffikers. He quickly finds him, about to snare another girl, and bashes his face into the cab and breaks half his ribs, asking what happened to the American girls. A huge security guy messes with Brian, and quickly gets his face bashed into so many different surfaces, he's knocked cold. But OH NOES! The kid with the broken ribs is running away. So Brian steals the cab and chases him down. The kid jumps off a freeway ramp onto the back of a semi, hobbles out into the street, and gets hit by a bus. Crud.

Some more stuff happens, and he finds the first group of guys, and it turns out that if there are a roomfull of guys with knives and guns, with more rooms full of the same all around, Liam Neeson will still kill all of them, except one, who he knocked out using a nearby surface beforehand. (Seriously, surfaces are dangerous when this guy is around.)

The interrogation scene is particularly harsh. Brian stabs the man in the legs, just above the knees, with a pair of nails, which he connects via jumper cables to a nearby lightswitch. Every flip of the switch turns on the light, and also fries the hell out of the guy. Eventually getting most of the information he wants, Brian walks away, leaving the lightswitch on as he leaves.

Then you get some more thrill-ride action as Brian finds the next guy on list, finds his daughter, and kills some more people. He even uses a move I like to call "The Tom Selleck," which involves being on the ground, shooting under some low object. First you shoot a guy in the ankles, and when he falls down, you shoot him in the somewhere-more-vital.

Then he gets his daughter back, flies home and blah, blah, blah, credits roll.

The Bottom Line: Like action movies? Good. Watch this one. Like action, but think most action movies suck? Try this one, I think you'll like it.