Taken

(2008) dir. Pierre Morel
viewed: 05/24/09

Lean, taut, and action-packed, Taken may not be the best action film of all time or even of the last year or two, but it’s all meat.  At 93 minutes, a significant part of which is beginning and ending credits, it’s not a very long film.

Liam Neeson plays a dad whose life has been dedicated to some sort of military special operations that have taken him away from his teenage daughter.  But now, he’s trying to make amends and be near by his daughter, ex-wife, et cetera.  But then his daughter up and goes on a trip to Europe.  Neeson, over-protective to the Nth degree, gives her a cell phone and expects frequent updates.  He knows “bad things happen” in the world.  And sure enough, while talking to him, she’s abducted into a white slavery racket.

You can know most of this from the trailer.  But the film doesn’t add too much fat to the package.  Without wasting any time that might make you start to analyze the plot, Neeson is himself in Europe and kicking white slave trader ass.

Directed by Pierre Morel, who made another lean action film, District B13 (2004), also produced as this one is by Luc Besson, among others, Taken benefits heavily from a complete forward-moving onrush, with not a glance backwards.  The body count is huge, but bloodless largely, keeping it within the realms of PG-13.  I have been bristling a lot at PG-13 movies of late because they basically can only go “so far” in any direction of extremity to keep the teenagers coming without parental ticket-buying.  It’s strictly a marketing thing, editing down these films, rather than going for full potential statement.  And with Taken, I think it would have been a highly brutal and gruesome film with much more put in there.

The thing about the film is that it’s all about a father who is trying to save his daughter from forced prostitution and an extreme destruction of her innocence.  But to do this, he’ll kill anyone, break any laws, kill as many as he has to, and torture away.  In fact, in one key sequence he tortures an Albanian trafficker, citing government practices sort of quickly, out-sourcing, etc.  So, whatever can be gleaned by the meaning, he is justified in torturing (and then going ahead and killing this guy anyways) because he’s a righteously defensive father.  What does this all get at?  Violence is justified.  Killing is justified.  Everything is justified when you are right.

Screw the French authorities.  They’re probably corrupt anyways.

So there’s a semi-disturbing subtext if you can catch your breath long enough to swallow.  It’s a subtext that really is at the heart of a lot of these types of dramas, revenge, violence, justification.  Taken doesn’t break ground.  But it’s fairly well-constructed.  Again, not in any real innovative way, but in a clean, tight, efficiency that a lot could learn from.