Taken

I'm split "half-and-half" with Taken. Pierre Morel's film has a great European style of action (Luc Besson did in fact write the script) with a strong central character (Liam Neeson) whose love for his daughter will make him stop at nothing to find her. And yet, that is pretty much all there is. The concept has nothing else to really give its audience. For all the fast paced gritty realism of certain scenes, there are also outlandish and action packed moments that quickly follow. I'm not sure if this film is more Jason Bourne or more James Bond. Either way, you will be entertained once the movie gets started and you move past the way too quick introductions to our central players. It makes sense that a father would do anything to save his daughter, and yet we are brought into the protagonist's world way too quickly to really take notice of his CIA skill set or the strong bond between him and the daughter. And the movie spends too much time with this set-up and misuses that time to instead place the characters into position while we could be learning more about them (the director could have cut the entire concert sub-plot and replaced it with something else to let us know that Mr. Neeson can still kick ass). Yet when the characters are all in place and the action moves completely into Europe, the film doesn't let down for a bit, despite how ridiculous (and yet still with a hint of being down to Earth) some of those set pieces can get.