Taken

French producer Luc Besson has showed us in the past that there is a way to make a predictable action movie and keep it interesting. The films that have come out of his studio including ‘Unleashed’ and ‘The Transporter’ have shown that skillful directing, snappy editing and careful cinematography can keep something moviegoers have seen a hundred times fresh and interesting. Besson’s longtime cinematographer Pierre Morel seems to have learned little from his colleague in his English-language film debut ‘Taken’, an uninspired thriller starring Liam Neeson as an ex-CIA agent chasing sex-traffickers who have kidnapped his teenage daughter.

Since Morel’s debut, ‘District B13’ was a highlight for European action films, it seemed logical that his first English-language film starring major Hollywood actors would be a prime opportunity to show of his cinematography skills. Unfortunately, ‘Taken’ lacks the camera-tricks and detailed set pieces that made his previous projects so novel. There are a few jumpy Euro-style edits here and there but Morel stays trapped in the stylistic wake of the Bourne films with little originality displayed.

As far as the acting goes, the performances are overall wooden. Neeson is decent as a cool, collected killer but the role forces him to be a little too charismatic, marring his strong, silent mystique. Famke Jannsen’s supporting role as Neeson’s ex-wife is standard boilerplate. Maggie Grace (of “Lost”) delivers a compelling performance as the kidnapped seventeen year old but she gets so little screen-time it doesn’t help things much.

A predictable plot and two-dimensional performances are typical of medium-budget action flicks. The true deal-killer for ‘Taken’ is the inclusion of sex trafficking as a major plot element. Putting such a serious subject into an otherwise cartoonish action film overshadows what few strengths the film has. Filming half-naked women with insufficient reason is cheap filmmaking but making them sex slaves to boot is just disturbing, exploiting a weighty issue to provide a dull film with some ‘eye-candy’.

‘Taken’ is a pedantic and at times inappropriate entry into the growing genre of Euro-style action thrillers. Expect its Box Office position to drop rapidly.

- C