ScreenWize

Billed as an action film in the Bourne trilogy tradition, Taken will certainly entertain in a battering-ram kind of way, Luc Besson’s linear and formulaic script slickly directed by fellow Frenchman Pierre Morel in this his second film as director, after a strong career as a cinematographer.

In almost every scene is Liam Neeson who follows in Harrison Ford’s footsteps as the ageing action hero, in this case an indestructible grey nomad by the name of Bryan Mills. He’s a retired and divorced spy who wants to spend more time with his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) who lives with Mum (Famke Janssen) and her new rich husband. There’s a laboured beginning to the film while we are delivered all the necessary back story about the family with some less than subtle writing, but when Kim is abducted on a holiday in Paris and Mills given a deadline to find her, we have all we need to ignite the action. There’s no complexity to trouble the grey matter here – once the kidnapping tale is set up, it’s just a case of counting the bodies and waiting to see who’s at the end of the trail of destruction that Mills leaves across Paris as he searches for his daughter.

Producer Besson (best known outside France as writer and director of The Fifth Element) is celebrated for keeping one eye on the visual look of his films and the other on the box-office, with characterisation and story credibility of less significance. The generalisation holds true with Taken, and between the superbly staged action sequences, there are frequent moments of melodrama and many of utter implausibility. There’s no attempt either to make any points about the sex slave industry – it’s just a backdrop for the action.

Neeson makes for a thoughtful and ruthless protagonist - half worrier, half warrior - and dishes out lashings of pain to an exotic collection of nasties, including Albanian people smugglers, French henchmen and Arab bodyguards. Once wound up, he is very resourceful and highly remorseless, drawing on some less than savoury skills he picked up in the service of his country. None of the other actors have much they can do with their two-dimensional characters: they squeal, cry, moan and/or die as required. If you like your action unadulterated by the subtle intricacies of human nature or the scheming machinations of competing organisational forces this will be for you.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon