Taken

There are not many movies that are as fun as "Taken" was. It was Liam Neeson (aka Aslan aka awesome dad from "Love Actually") kicking ass trying to find his daughter for an hour and a half. Yeah, thats all it was, that's all it needed to be. I could follow the plot (or as much of it as there was), i actually cared whether his daughter lived or not (Maggie Grace, aka Shannon from Lost but a lot less whiny), and there were great fight scenes.

My hometown movie critic, Mick LaSalle of the SF Chronicle had given it a good review saying it was very fun and enjoyable because it lived up to its own expectations to be a great Liam Neeson doing crazy kung fu stuff.

I was thinking this morning about why the story seemed so new. There have been films about parents trying to rescue kidnapped children ("Ransom" comes to mind as the best, "Eagle Eye" had a bit), but I can't think of any where it is a father saving a teenage daugther. It changes the formula, because a seventeen year old daughter is not going to be as easily kidnapped/subdued as a kid, so they had to make it seem believable in using a whole giant underground operation in trafficking women (icky). I was seriously creeped out by the stuff, as I'm sure Liam Neeson Dad would have been too. Kudos to the screenwriter for changing the formula. That's how good movies happen!