Liam Neeson spends most of Taken on the phone. That is the film’s best idea and its whole engine: a retired CIA officer named Bryan Mills, played by Neeson, listens to his 17-year-old daughter Kim get dragged out of a Paris apartment, then tells the men who took her what happens next. The threat lands. So does the movie’s problem — everything after that promise is a straight line.
Trailer, via My French Stories.
Bryan Mills and the 96 Hours
Pierre Morel directed Taken, released in France on February 27, 2008. Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen wrote it. The setup is lean: Bryan is a former Green Beret and CIA officer trying to reconnect with Kim, who lives with her mother Lenore and wealthy stepfather Stuart. He saves pop star Sheerah from a knife-wielding attacker at a concert, which earns Kim an audition offer. Then Kim asks to go to Paris with her friend Amanda.
Bryan says yes under pressure from Lenore. At the airport he learns the girls are actually following U2 around Europe. In Paris they meet Peter, who drives them to a cousin’s apartment and then makes a phone call.
Peter’s Phone Call
The abduction arrives fast. Kim is on the phone with her father when the men come in. He tells her to yell out descriptions. She does. Bryan’s former colleague Sam identifies the crew as an Albanian sex trafficking ring and the voice on the tape as its boss, Marko Hoxha.
Sam also supplies the clock: if Kim is not found within 96 hours, Bryan likely never finds her. Bryan flies to Paris, finds Kim’s broken phone, and works the memory card for photos. He identifies Peter.
A One-Man War in Paris
From there Taken becomes a chase through the city, Bryan against the gang, using the training the film keeps reminding us he has. The tagline sells it plainly: “They took his daughter. He’ll take their lives.”
It is efficient. It is also thin. The villains are functions, not people. Hoxha gets a name and a voice and little else. The trafficking ring exists so Bryan has something to break.
What Liam Neeson Does With It
Neeson is the reason any of this works. He plays Bryan as a man running calculations, not a man raging, and the calm is what makes the phone call land. Famke Janssen has almost nothing to do as Lenore. Maggie Grace spends most of the runtime as a captive.
The supporting cast — Leland Orser as Sam, Jon Gries as Mark Casey, David Warshofsky as Bernie Harris, Katie Cassidy as Amanda — fills roles the script needs filled.
$226 Million Against $25 Million
Taken cost $25 million and grossed $226 million. That gap explains the franchise: two sequels and a television series followed. It also explains the reviews, which were mixed.
The movie is a delivery system for one scene and one performance. Strip out the phone call and you have a competent European thriller with a forgettable plot.
The Franchise It Started
Media outlets have called Taken a turning point in Neeson’s career, the film that redefined him as an action star. That reading holds up. The movie works because he plays a man who has already done this before.
What it does not do is earn its own violence. Bryan’s threat is the best writing in the film. Everything after is obligation.
Ranked against the action movies it spawned, Taken sits here:
- The phone call — genuinely great, the reason the film exists.
- Neeson’s performance — controlled, specific, better than the material.
- The Paris chase — functional, unremarkable.
- The villains — a name and a nationality, nothing more.
- Kim’s abduction — effective, then abandoned as a character.
Taken is a 94-minute commercial for its own premise. It sells the premise well. It has nothing else to sell.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
