Review - Taken

Taken - Liam Neesan plays a retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter. who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.

Hello again; Welcome to the newest Dr.Film film review; today I shall be reviewing the hard hitting, action revenged themed adventure 'Taken' which stars Liam Neesan as the leading role.

This film was released in 2008; it was released in the released in the UK on the 26th of September 2008 and released sometime after in the USA on the 30th January 2009. It is now available worldwide to buy on DVD.

SPOILER ALERT!: As in all my reviews there is going to be a lot of spoilers. so If your not of fan of things being spoiled for you; I suggest you do something else with your time.

AWARENESS ALERT!: This film has a strong awareness issue, presented in it on trafficking. which some viewers, should you go on to watch the film find very upsetting.  Also although the events that happen in this film are fictional the threat is very real. thousands of young girls go missing all over the world and are never found, so please take the trafficking messages in this film seriously.

This film is approximatly 89 minutes long. (1 hour and 29 minutes) so it's just under an hour and a half.  It's quite a short film.

The Plot or Storyline of 'Taken' is about a Seventeen year-old girl called Kim (Maggie Grace) who is the pride and joy of her father Bryan Mills (Liam Neesan).

Bryan is a retired agent who left the Central Intelligence Agency to be near Kim in California to build a relationship with her. Kim lives with her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley).

Kim manages to convince her reluctant and overly protective father to allow her to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. When the girls arrive in Paris they share a cab with a stranger named Peter, and Amanda lets it slip that they are alone in Paris.

Using this information an Albanian gang of human traffickers kidnap both of the girls. Kim barely has time to call her father and give him information. Her father gets a brief oppertunity to speak with one of the kidnappers and he promises to kill the kidnappers if they do not let his daughter go free.

The kidnapper wishes him "good luck," so Bryan travels to Paris forthwith to search for his daughter and bring her back home safetly.

The Director of this thriller is a rather interesting frenchmen called Pierre Morel. As a director I found his skills and techniques to be quite observant. there was a reason for every shot, and camera angle he made. perticulary when he has Liam Neesan, doing heavy action sequences. It's very fast paced and to the point of 'were not mucking around, we mean buisness' and I liked that aspect of the film; because some action films can't control their balance at all. some action films actually rely upon heavy action and dire drama. 'Taken' deosn't; 'Taken' actually isn't afraid to be differant.

Relying on his old skills, Bryan manages to find the ruthless gang who kidnapped his daughter. he launches a one-man war to bring them to justice and rescue his daughter; luckily he saves Kim in time before she becomes the newset trade to the sex slave auction.

Acting wise I thought 'Liam Neesan' as Bryan Mills was just fantastic. Some of you may know Liam Neesan from films such as 'Batman Begins' , 'Star Wars' and 'Schindlers List' and he very well known for doing Taken; in Taken Neesan is gripping, sensitive, reluctant, scary when he needs to be, and overall a one of a kind bad ass and a force which should'nt be recokend with.

Another person who I liked in this film was 'Maggie Grace' who I haven't had a lot of variaty with. I've only seen her perform in the two taken films and she made a brief appearance in 'Braking Dawn - Part 2'. I was very impressed with Maggie Grace's performance; I thought she did a very good job.

I liked and senced all feeling with Kim and Bryan's relationship, how Bryan is the protective one and Kim is the nieve one.

In general I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish; and embraced the action in this film

Rounding this all up, 'Taken' is very good. I'm going to rate this film 7/10.

I'm awarding 1 gold star to Liam Neesan
1 Silver star to the Director Pierre Morel and 1 Bronze star to Maggie Grace

Thank You for reading this review, I hope you enjoyed it.

 My next review is going to be 'Argo' written, directed by and starring Ben Affleck. and I will post that on Saturday the 4th of May.