Taken (2008)

I had no interest in this flick when it was new. Only after seeing repeated references to it more than a decade later did I think it might be worth my time. Even then, I wasn't exactly eager.

In modern California, Bryan (Liam Neeson) has retired from the CIA, not because he's past his prime but because his job got between him and his family: His wife (Famke Janssen) divorced him, and teen daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) lives with her and a rich stepdad (Xander Berkeley). Kim's love for Bryan is precarious enough that he reluctantly agrees to let her go to Paris with only peer Amanda (Katie Cassidy) for company. But his honed paranoid instinct was right: During Kim's call to him, strangers kidnap her and Amanda. Bryan gets the recorded portion of the call analyzed and learns that the kidnappers belong to a gang of human traffickers lately with a sexual focus, bound to sell their captives who knows where within four days. Obviously, he won't rely on the authorities for that turnaround time....

OK, Bryan does try an old comrade (Olivier Rabourdin), but the French agent claims to have his hands tied. Indeed, the local law enforcement actively opposes Bryan's efforts after plenty of death and destruction. He never did have much regard for rules, as more than one acquaintance notes.

Antiheroic? Yes, but it's hard to blame him under the circumstances. Crime doesn't get much scuzzier than sex slavery, so I shed no tears for anyone voluntarily involved in the process. I even approved Bryan's decision to threaten a man, get the demanded cooperation, and still carry out the threat -- something that always annoyed me when James Bond did it. That said, harming and threatening to kill an innocent party to appeal to a guilty party's heart crosses the line for me, The Silence of the Lambs notwithstanding.

Speaking of crossing the line, I'm rather surprised that the rating is only PG-13. Granted, there's no onscreen nudity or unambiguous sex, and I don't recall heavy swearing, but you'd think the violence, drugs, and overt prostitution talk would do the trick. Well, this being a French production under Luc Besson, it may not be subject to quite the same standards.

In terms of writing, Taken is rather bland and run-of-the-mill. We're supposed to disregard how easily everything happens. Even the most quoted monologue is nowhere near Dirty Harry quality. I credit Neeson with making it remotely transcendent. He did take the role seriously enough to learn karate and perform a lot of his own stunts, after all.

To me, the main value is in catharsis. Part of me wanted to see a guy rout thugs easily without moral qualms, for reasons other than sheer vengeance. In these days of anger and dissatisfaction with authority figures, it's the kind of fantasy many of us could use.

I'm not going to watch Taken 2 or 3. Receptions aside, they seem conceptually unsound: How many times is one man going to deal with kidnappers? But I am keeping John Wick on the table for the next time I crave an outlet.