"TONIGHT Matthew, I'm going to be Jason Bourne's dad". If movie characters were conceived using Stars in their Eyes for guidance, this would be the pitch for Liam Neeson's hardnut spy in this morally indefensible but outrageously entertaining act
ion fest. Appropriating Paul Greengrass's Bourne template and applying it to a fascistic Commando-style rescue'n'revenge rampage, it casts Neeson as a government-trained "Preventer" newly retired from covertly protecting America so he can reconnect with his estranged 17-year-old daughter (Maggie Grace). An acrimonious split from his ex (Famke Janssen) has made this mission nearly impossible, which is why, against his better judgement, he agrees to let her travel to big, scary Europe, where she's promptly snatched by Albanian sex traffickers who sell virginal white girls to Arab millionaires. Dodgy premise duly established, from the moment Neeson calmly informs his daughter's kidnappers that he has a "very particular set of skills", it's throat-punching, skull-cracking action all the way as he dons a leather jacket and sets about tearing Paris apart until he finds her. Written by Luc Besson, Taken is deliberate exploitation trash, but it's extremely efficient exploitation trash and Neeson's stop-at-nothing, kill-crazy hero is certainly more entertaining than all the doomed mentor roles he's played of late.
The full article contains 229 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
