Film Review--Taken

Taken (2008)
directed by Pierre Morel
written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Arben Bajraktaraj, Holly Valance, Nicolas Giraud, Xander Berkeley, Katie Cassidy

Despite a number of rather improbable coincidences this film proves to be an exceedingly elegant story of the intensity of a father’s love for his daughter.

Brian Mills (Neeson) is an ex-CIA operative who has recently retired to spend more time with his daughter Kim (Grace). He is somewhat estranged from Kim because he hasn’t always been around due to his career and she has found parental guidance in her step-father Brian (Berkeley) who she lives with along with her mother Lanore (Janssen.

One of the central moments in this film involves Kim’s abduction at the hands of Albanians who ultimately plan on selling her to a Sheik. The camera and music create a tense situation that is fraught with danger. It is held together by Neeson’s steady, calm response to the terror that is afflicting his character’s daughter on the other end of the phone. She is in Paris with her friend Amanda (Cassidy) and the pair plan on following U2 across Europe. They meet a young man named Peter (Giraud) who shares a cab with them to Amanda’s cousin’s residence where they are to stay for the duration of their visit. Peter calls someone and quickly thereafter the girls are dragged away.

This is a story in which it is absurdly easy to get behind the central character. Neeson never lets us to forget the severity of his mission as he summons up his immense skills to track down the men responsible for capturing his daughter. Mills is relentless in his pursuit and of the mind set that it’s much better to shoot first than to wait around and see who’s holding. He is the ultimate action hero because he is fighting for something that is so personally precious to him and he is not about to suffer the guilt that would inevitably collapse his world should he fail. Indeed, failure is not an option here and so he goes about working his way up the ladder until he inevitably reaches the final pillar and must face to face with the devil himself or at least one of his representatives.

The film’s look is intoxicating throughout. The cinematography by Michel Abramowicz is clean, crisp and economical. It is tinged with an impossible sheen that is remarkably restrained. It creates a sense of glamour but nevertheless does not effectively glamorize the killings be committed at every turn.

Much of the power in this film originates through Mills’s grim, incessant determination to save his daughter from a life of sure ruin. It’s vigilante justice taken to a menacing, purposeful extreme. One is constantly reminded of the nefarious nature of the world that Mills is entering and his almost puritanical zeal for the safe return of his loved one. His tremendous capabilities for torture and combat plus his fearless mien are routinely demonstrated in swift, controlled movements that provide him with the proper inroads into solving the pressing dilemma before him.

This film introduces its central characters with a decisive lack of urgency. We meet them and immediately identify with whatever course of action they are to take. It’s a very simple approach that so many films fail to undertake. In this film it matters because the interpersonal relationships here are vital to understanding Mills’s motivation and his sense of futility in his relationship with Kim. In a few short minutes we know the dynamics and we know what is at stake for Mills. He is presented as a loving father who is trying to make up for lost time yet faces the reality of another man, a rich and genuine man, in his daughter’s life. It is clear that he has failed Kim in some sense and that this fact upsets him intensely.

There are moments in this film that seem to be improbable in their execution. Mills goes to the apartment Kim and Amanda were to stay in and removes a photo card from her camera. He investigates the images and finds one of a man he immediately suspects as being the spotter who set up the initial transaction. From that single photo he is able to track the man down and interrogate him only to lose him in the end. It is difficult to believe that he was able to accomplish all of this with nothing but a blurred photo to go on. One wonders how he knew where to go in such a massive city to find the man responsible for setting the chain in motion that inevitably leads to the Sheik.

The use in this film of the international selling of Western girls to Albanians most likely has ramifications in Albanian communities world wide. It’s an utterly corrupt depiction that presents the Albanians as wholly devious and monstrous. There is nothing whatsoever about them that is remotely likable; they come off as cruel and menacing businessmen who capitalize on the existence of a steady flow of easy prey into the cities. This is a film that expresses a very real and terrible fear that such events may occur at any given time. It presents naive and industrious girls who unwittingly stumble into traps that are set under the most innocent pretexts. They fall for the charm of a spotter who quietly ingratiates himself into their lives by playing on their trust. This film focuses on the simplicity of such an arrangement and demonstrates just how easy it is to mark certain females and wrestle them into a life devoid of hope, where they are made perpetually high, and forced to engage in activities with much older men who treat them like chattle.

The performances in this film are all dynamic and natural. Liam Neeson captivates from start to finish with a character who is fraught with complications but who is able to act in a decisive manner when the situation calls for it. He’s confident in his abilities but not so confident when it comes to the relationship he has with his daughter. It is here that Neeson demonstrates a tremendous range of emotion. During his mission he is driven and focused and tends to show little emotion. With Kim, his disposition is entirely different. He’s open, expressive, and clearly driven by a great love he knows he has almost let slip away. Maggie Grace is extraordinary in this film. She captures her character’s desire to expand and connect with a world much larger than what she has thus far experienced. One gets an immediate sense of her excitement as she makes her plans for heading to Paris. Also, she demonstrates on at least two occasions the fact that she really is barely seventeen and in many ways still a little girl who runs in to her father’s arms and clings madly to him. Famke Janssen’s character is captivating and aggressively disdainful of her ex-husband throughout much of the film. Lenore doesn’t give Mills any space in this film and holds him responsible for his lack of involvement in Kim’s life.

Overall, this is a scintillating film that creates a world of despair and destruction that its central character must fight, using his arsenal of skills, to combat. It’s the classic story of one man fighting for a just cause who must use any means necessary to achieve his aim. There is a sense of freshness in how this film approaches its subject and it never feels strained or superficial. The tension is on from the moment Kim and Amanda are abducted and it never abates straight through to the end. These ultimately are characters worth caring about and this has everything to do with the performances. They are astute at conveying the myriad complexities that haunt each of their lives and the end result is a film that is an exploration of a blistering reality that effects many young women worldwide every year.