REVIEW: Taken (15)

Unusual as it is seeing the man who was Schindler headlining an action movie, Liam Neeson has had a mainstream break coming for some time.

Despite the relative failure of The Phantom Menace, memorable perfomances in movies such as Batman Begins mean the 56-year-old is now known for far more than playing famous historical figures.

Produced by Gallic film making god Luc Besson Neeson plays Bryan, a former secret service agent who has retired to spend more time with his daughter (Maggie Grace), a feat made more difficult by his mistrusting ex-wife (Famke Janssen). However, when the daughter is snatched on holiday in Paris, Bryan is forced to draw on his old ‘skills’ to penetrate the Parisian human trafficking underworld to find her and make the captors pay.

The story is both delightful and frustrating due to its simplicity. Neeson is a grizzled ex-spy (menacingly described as ‘a preventer’) on the warpath after his kidnapped daughter in Paris and will stop at NOTHING to find her. It’s full of great little tension-building lines (the “I will find you…and I will kill you” trailer speech) lots of practical spying techniques that make reasonable sense, and an abundance of close-combat fights scenes (chops to the neck, twisting arms inside out, you know the score).

It's one hell of a ride until you reach the frustrating part. Neeson is tremendous actor but even he can barely disguise that this is a Steven Segal movie, only with a lead that can act. The story is a thinly veiled excuse for loads of fight scenes, the bad guys are cardboard cut-out Eastern European gangsters and the similarities to the Bourne trilogy are so incredibly obvious at one point you’ll swear you can see Matt Damon driving a Mini in the background.

That said, Neeson is great. You buy his story because he has the look a man who could do you harm if he were pushed too far. The super-violence, elaborate torture and car chases are all made that bit more believable thanks to his presence. What stops it being a great movie, however, is that beneath the grainy realism it is a simple ‘one man army’ spectacular, a 21st Century Commando if you will. You never really feel that Neeson’s super soldier is in any real danger. There’s no point where you think “how is he going to get out of this?” All this makes Taken an enjoyable action movie but not one that will stay in the memory for long.

Taken is released September 26.