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Review

Taken

Director

Pierre Morel

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Taken’s approach is not innovative, but the best part of it is it doesn’t pretend to be so, it only pretends to entertain, and that can’t even be called pretense, it’s an intent, an achievement, because what Taken does by avoiding worrying about avoiding doing what others have done, is to fluidly and unpretentiously develop its story and its main character into a constantly climatic tale that comes off, quite incredibly, totally credible. This is the perfect example of cliché avoidance by not struggling to avoid it. Typical though it may seem, I challenge anyone to tell me that the story isn’t as fresh and new as anything else. While watching it, I felt like it was my first such experience (forgive my romanticism).

The main character is bodyguard Bryan (Liam Neeson), now retired in order to be close to his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who lives with her mother (Famke Janssen). Bryan is an action man, but it’s important to understand that he’s also quite the loving father, and a mixture of both has never occurred, but it will soon enough. Establishing the peaceful (or is it?) side of the main character is the slowest part of the story, but luckily that’s how it begins, not how it ends.

Bryan comes off as paranoid, and unfortunately the movie proves him right, because no excess of warning is enough for his daughter when she travels to Europe and gets into trouble from the very airport. This is one spin that I personally didn’t like of the script: it proves super-paranoid parents, as my own, right. Who can blame them for worrying though, but one wishes they weren’t proved right, finding their overprotection justified.

This dad however is as prepared to warn as he is to act, and he’s really not one to be subdued. He’d rather kill than make a deal, that’s this kind of man. It’s like he wants to cure the world from all evil, and still he retains a great goodness in himself. The balance is of such complexity that the whole film could be about that. Luckily, again, it doesn’t focus on this duality, it just implies its difficulty, but stays on the action, on what matters for this tale.

And what matters is the kidnapping of the girl and Bryan’s subsequent actions. He’s a resourceful man who doesn’t hesitate to use brute force against his detractors but usually goes for the brainy approach and pulls off his stunts intelligently. What’s best is we totally believe all this is possible. From the very casting it’s implausible, I would never have thought of Liam Neeson as an action man and indeed it’s against-type, but it works, both because he’s tuff-e-nuff and because his character is so well-scripted that we just follow him around, believing blindly in what he is, despite our beliefs.

The story by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen also doesn’t worry about judgment. Indeed, Bryan’s defiance of the law and constant risk-taking might seem stupid to some, but it’s his way of action, the only one he can consider given his experience, and it works to an extent, though there’s much cruelty and killing in his path. This isn’t black and white; sure, “legal” law enforcers can be corrupt, but that doesn’t mean they always or surely are. Bryan can be as wrong in overprotecting his daughter as he can be about all cops being dirty, and though the story proves him right in both extents, it doesn’t seem to me like it defends his absolute correctness.

Again (and this is getting repetitious I’m afraid), that the story doesn’t question Bryan’s ways or beliefs is no more than the lack of obstacles for the story to flow; consider what it would be like if Bryan was constantly questioned by the story itself whether he’s right or wrong—it would slow him down, and that would be deadly.

This is a far superior “popcorn flick” and a rather simplistic classy one. It’s caught in the middle and that’s how it’ll be treated. But it will turn irresistible to whoever catches it. As with everything else, Bryan won’t stop to wonder whether you like his film or not; he’ll just take you there.

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