Taken (2008)

Directed by Pierre Morel. Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Olivier Rabourdin, Leland Orser, Katie Cassidy, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Xander Berkeley, Arben Bajraktaraj, Holly Valance, Gérard Watkins, Goran Kostić. [PG-13]

Liam Neeson’s teenage daughter (Grace) is traveling unchaperoned in Paris when she and her friend are kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring, but they weren’t expecting her father to have “a very particular set of skills, skills [he has] acquired over a very long career” as a Green Beret and CIA operative (“skills that make [him] a nightmare for people like [them],” if you want to keep the terse yet corny monologue going). Awfully icky subject matter for a preposterous action-thriller, but since Neeson’s grim hero is so cold-blooded and murderous when he gets worked up that he makes Dirty Harry look like Barney Fife, the movie makes no bones about giving audiences what they want—a one-man wrecking crew making very bad people pay with their lives. Audiences were certainly receptive, as they turned a pummeling programmer into a monster hit and reshaped the lead actor’s career by making an action star out of the 56-year-old North Irish actor, even though it’s a mediocre junk movie that uses speed and force as a replacement for logic and intelligence (consider how creaky those early scenes are, and how poorly Grace and Famke Janssen are directed to act). Would have been more watchable if a singular antagonist had emerged from the repellent pile, but Neeson simply knocks off one thinly-drawn creep after another until they’re all dead, like watching someone play a video game while skipping the cut scenes. Spawned a pair of sequels and a short-lived TV series.

45/100