This weekend I watched the movie “Taken”. It was an adrenaline-
fueled thriller staring a lesser known actor Liam Neeson. The
only way I even had heard of him was I had read that his actress
wife was recently killed while skiing.

Liam plays the character Bryan Mills who recently retired from
the CIA in order to live closer to his teenage daughter. He was
away from her much of her childhood so now Bryan is trying to
make up for lost time.

His daughter Kim, announces that she’s taking a trip to Paris
with her friend Amanda. Bryan is apprehensive about her traveling
on her own. His worst fear is soon realized, as Kim and Amanda
are abducted by Romanians upon their arrival in France to be put
into the sex slave industry. Bryan quickly takes matters into his
own hands, working his way through Paris’s underworld as the
clock ticks down and the bullets fly.

It wasn’t as good as Die Hard, or Dirty Harry but it was better
than Steven Segal at his best. The other thing I liked was there
were no one liners from the hero. In almost all of the past kick
butt movies the hero always says something clever before killing
the bad guy. In this movie the hero kept his mouth shut and took
care of business.

The action was constant and little time was spent building up
the story about who the kidnappers were and why, nor did the
script writers spend much time on Bryan’s personal life. Shortly
after the movies started so did the action and it did not let up
until the end.

This shouldn’t be mistaken for a classic or a masterpiece, but
what it sets out to do it does very, very well, and it’s a hell of a
lot of fun watching Neeson beat the sh..t out of nameless,
faceless henchmen. It’s simple, direct, exciting and a great time.

This was an all around good movie.