Day 41 - Taken (again)

•  One of my early reviews, placed here because I just rewatched Taken.  Enjoy.

  The Critic Wannabe (reviews Taken)

  1:41 AMLikeYou liked this Unlike
  Day 914
  Taken
  Supermom = Tilda Swinton's Margaret Hall from The Deep End http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250323/
  Superkid = Harry Eden's Paul from Pure http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308772/
  And now we have Superdad = Liam Neeson's Bryan Hill in Taken.
  If you've seen the trailer (a really great one), then you know this is about a dad who goes after the guys who (randomly) kidnap his daughter while she's in France on a vacation.  That's what we call a bad move, fellas.
  Liam is a machine.  He's all sweet and lovey-dovey at the beginning, even if he's trying to get used to being "retired" so he can be closer to his daughter (literally and figuratively).  But she's his life right now, so when she's kidnapped, all the skills that our government gave him to keep our country safe - they're going to be used in France on many, many bad men.
  Rambo, last year, did something very well - and that was make the bad guys so reprehensible that you were cheering their deaths.  They were bad men.  This film uses the same tactics, and, by golly, it worked for me here, too.  When Kim (played by the apparently ageless Maggie Grace) is kidnapped, the movie decides to never stop for a moment.  All that character-building stuff at the beginning?  That was just to lull you into a sense of complacency.  Because from that moment on, Liam Neeson is a killing machine, focused only on the task at hand - rescuing his daughter in the little window of time that he's allotted.
  This is not a man who negotiates deals with bad guys for information.  This is a man who will kill everyone in the room, leaving one person left to tell him the next location where he can repeat the process.  He risks his life for his daughter.  If he can't find her (by the end of the movie), then his own life means nothing.  He shoots, stabs, and pummels anyone in his way, never losing focus that his daughter's rescue needs to be the end result.
  I refuse to nitpick at a movie that had me shouting at the screen "YEAH!" a number of times.  It's entertainment, pure and simple.  And the fact that it was directed by the same guy who did District B13 (Pierre Morel) only makes me more satisfied.
  The trailer is the movie without giving the movie away and Liam Neeson IS Superdad.
  ***1/2 (I'm feeling generous because I'm still exhilirated.)
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