What Do The Critics Say?

"Anyone who has seen "Batman Begins" (or before that, "Rob Roy") probably won’t be too surprised to learn that the unassuming Liam Neeson, when given the opportunity, can kick ass with the best of them. Certainly a director who knows how to shoot action helps, but Neeson earns his star salary here, and is onscreen for pretty much the entire movie. It’s a smooth actioner, barely 90 minutes long, and the film is one of those high-concept movies sold purely on its single logline: Ex-CIA guy kills half of Paris to get back his kidnapped daughter." Bernard Besserglik BEYONDHOLLYWOOD "Without ever taking his shirt off, Liam Neeson makes a surprisingly convincing one-man mean machine in "Taken," in which an ex-CIA agent rids Paris of most of its Albanian population while rescuing his darlin' teen daughter from nasty white-slave traders. Widescreen package is technically slick at all levels, and ditto the action choreography. Neeson growls his way through the functional dialogue as an unstoppable killing machine in impressive, cold-eyed style." Derek Elly VARIETY "the action sequences are well done by former cinematographer Pierre Morel and Liam Neeson convinces as a tough guy who, as he tells his daughter 'prevented bad things from happening'." MaRGARET Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES "I went in expecting ...... well, I don't know quite what, but I came out having seen one of the best films of my life. Easily the best action flick since Bourne, "Taken" grabs the audience by the scruff of the collar and won't let you breathe 'til all is said and done. I'll be following this one closely through til it's release, and you can expect more coverage here: if you're a lover a good cinema, "Taken" comes highly recommended." YAHOO MOVIE REVIEWS "Taken delivers non-stop action with Liam Neeson in devastating form as the former security agent who turns Paris upside down as he searches for his abducted daughter. Director Pierre Morel has a great eye for action and in true Luc Besson style (Besson co-wrote and produced the film), we are on a knife's edge throughout the spectacular chases and gritty action sequences that evolve naturally as part of the storyline." Louise Keller URBANCINEFILE

"Writer-producer Luc Besson has done his darnedest here to deliver a "Death Wish" they messed with the wrong melon farmer slice of gratuitous violence and it's a guilty pleasure. This is classic revenge fare that borders unnervingly on being voyeuristic and downright nasty. The actual violence itself is shocking, concise and surprisingly brutal for a formulaic film. And that, let's face it, is why we bought the ticket in the first place." Chris Murray EMPIRE MAGAZINE "French producer and writer Luc Besson's hand is heavily imprinted on this fast-paced action film that is remarkably free of computer-generated effects. Neeson is entirely believable as the determined, highly trained operative who is able to think fast and outwit the villains at just about every turn. The body count mounts the longer the film runs, and if it's action you're craving, "Taken" serves up a feast without as much blood or fantasy as Wanted." Des Partridge BRISBANE COURIER MAIL "Liam Neeson brings his considerable screen presence to the role of Bryan, and is at least as likeable and credible as Harrison Ford might have been in this role some years ago. This is that kind of role, where the hero has a powerful personal agenda motivating the big game action. The film's big strength remains its solid story: and its well chosen cast." Andrew L Urban URBANCINEFILE "After a career spent teetering on the edges of the action genre, Liam Neeson finally jumps in with both feet in the French produced flick "Taken", an excitingly staged action flick. The fight scenes have a genuine snap-and-crack, and there are several edge of the seat chase sequences, while Neeson makes for an engaging and relatively believable hero." Erin Free FILMINK "Hell hath no fury like a father in pursuit of his virginal daughter. Chuck Bronson would have loved this part. Taken is basically a modern western. I think Besson is remaking "The Searchers; only nastier and with more relevance to our times (which means the violence is on-screen, rather than off). And just like John Wayne in "The Searchers", Neeson becomes something darker in the pursuit. Taken is basically a "kill-'em-all, let God sort-'em-out" kind of action movie. It's very efficiently made, very nasty and very Old Testament." Paul Byrnes SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

The Inside Story From the producer and writer of "The Transporter" comes the thriller "Taken", starring Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, an ex-government operative who has less than four days to find his kidnapped daughter, who has been taken on her first day of vacation in Paris. According to the film’s co-screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen ("The Fifth Element"), it was co-writer and producer Luc Besson ("The Fifth Element") who came up with the idea for "Taken". "Luc had met with a Paris police officer who told him about this underworld of kidnappers who take young women," Kamen recalls. "The girls would then be auctioned off in these gorgeous mansions just outside of Paris." Besson and Kamen turned this idea into a compelling story, with big set pieces, practical action, martial arts, and what Kamen calls "crazy/crazy" stunts, and very few computer generated effects notinh , It’s the same mix we’ve used in films like "The Transporter" and "Kiss of the Dragon". Their protagonist’s history as a former government operative appealed to Kamen, who had read about the startling exploits of several real-life operatives when Kamen was doing graduate study work in Afghanistan. "I learned about guys doing covert operations, real 'cuckoo stuff', in that part of the world. I was particularly impressed with their self-reliance and skills. They’re not the kind of guys who call the police when they’re in a jam. They look at problems as things to be solved, as opposed to getting someone else to solve them for them. They don’t adhere to the conventions of society." Kamen and Besson wrote Bryan Mills with many of these qualities in mind. To direct "Taken", Besson hired Pierre Morel, who had helmed the internationally acclaimed action film "District B13", which introduced the martial art parkour (a gorgeously choreographed, propulsive fighting style) to movie fans around the globe. Morel who is a noted cinematographer, had shot "Unleashed" (a.k.a. "Danny The Dog") Beeson who both write and produced the film. Morel’s on-set demeanor impressed Kamen, who likens it to that of his lead character, Bryan Mills. "Pierre is really calm and cool," Kamen notes. "He comes in, knows what the job is, and knows what he has to do to make it happen." Morel, though, says that along with that calm comes a responsibility to keep the energy high on the set. "Even though a lot hinges on the editing, the rhythm has to be there when you're shooting. If it's not, there's no second chance. I always ask the actors to keep up a high tempo and to be as realistic as possible. And personally, I'm really charged up in the way I shoot, so I think a lot of the movie's energy comes from that. If you take your time over things, when you start to edit, you have to trim it back down and so you lose the rhythm." 2005 Irish Film and Television Award winner Liam Neeson ("Kinsey"), who has worked with renowned directors like Steven Spielberg ("Schindler's List"), Martin Scorsese ("Gangs of New York"), George Lucas ("Star Wars: Episode I"), Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins") and Sir Ridley Scott ("Kingdom Of Heaven"), says he was impressed with the young filmmaker. "Pierre has had movies in his blood for a long time and is hugely experienced, especially as a director of photography. I particularly liked the originality of "District B13", which showed he had a director's eye and an incredible sense of rhythm and energy, which was vital on the set of "Taken". I also liked the fact that Pierre operates the camera himself." To some, Neeson, who made his professional acting debut in the play "The Risen People" before being cast in the 1981 feature film "Excalibur", may appear to be an unconventional choice to portray an action hero. His resume` says otherwise. What was it then that attracted him to the project? "I liked the idea of making a thriller that had good pace and aimed high on an emotional level," he said. "Above all, we see Bryan as a father who idolizes his daughter. But then, even though it's never been a fantasy of mine to play an action hero, one gets a real kick out of shooting real movie baddies and driving like a racing car driver." The actor enjoyed bringing to life the character’s physicality, for which he underwent a rigorous program prior to the start of production. "I keep pretty fit, but I had to crank up the level and intensity of my training," he said. "Action scenes are particularly tricky. You have to pay close attention to how you move, your body position, and never take your eyes off your scene partner. It requires a lot of energy, besides the safety issues. Each time, it's a real challenge. The little boy in you comes out with all the hand to hand combat scenes we filmed. With good stuntmen, especially, the fight becomes a dance that you perform with great pleasure." To bring maximum impact to these combat and action set pieces, Morel carefully rehearsed them with Neeson. "We did a huge amount of rehearsal for Liam, because I wanted him to do as much as he possibly could without resorting to stunt doubles," says the director. "Of course, he doesn't jump off the bridge or throw himself in front of cars, but he did all the fight scenes after spending hours rehearsing each routine. It was particularly demanding for him because I didn't want to speed up the action too much in the camera. Liam really did learn to fight strong." Most of the film is set in the city of love Paris although readers can rest assured that in "Taken" there is no love shown by Mills for those who have taken his young daughter. Morel avoided a stylized or what he calls a 'cosmetic' look for the Paris-based sequences. "I wanted Paris to look the way it really is," he explained. "The idea was to be as realistic as possible, to achieve a kind of unlit look. I wanted a kind of faux picture-postcard view of Paris, avoiding the usual clichés of a character posing in front of the Eiffel Tower or Trocadéro, but ensuring that it was immediately obvious that the action was set in Paris. So, we looked for typically Parisian locations while avoiding the tourist traps. That meant we ended up filming on the Champs Elysées the day after the presidential elections, with half the streets blocked because the new president decided to parade down the avenue. We filmed the scene surrounded by riot police." Filming in Paris, much of it at night, and almost all of it involving action and stunts, was certainly challenging for Neeson. But as he points out, working in the French capital and, for the first time with a French crew, also had an important upside. "One good point of working in Paris is the greater female presence in the crew. I'm very sensitive to the energy men and women combine to create on the set, but British or American crews are almost always overwhelmingly male. I was also grateful for French working hours, which are very civilized. Between fight scene rehearsals and filming, my days were pretty exhausting, but we had a whole night to recover. Not to mention the pleasure of the quality of life in Paris." See Paris through live webcams here. In addition to making sure that Neeson had the requisite physical skills to convey Bryan’s impressive martial abilities, Morel and Neeson worked hard to realize the overwhelming emotions Bryan experiences when Kim (played by "Lost" star Maggie Grace), is talking on a mobile phone provided by her father and reveals the shocking news that there are men in the Paris apartment and that her friend Amanda (played by Katie Cassidy who appeared in "Click" & "When A Stranger Calls") has been taken by them. Neeson’s Bryan is in Los Angeles and Grace’s Kim is in Paris, so Morel shot the sequence in both locales. "We started in Los Angeles by shooting Liam's reaction, as if he was listening to events live. Maggie Grace came on the set and said all her lines up to the scream, when she's kidnapped, standing by the camera, which enabled Liam to react in real time. It was magical. The timing that was laid down gave me much greater freedom in Paris. I could adapt the physical action of the kidnapping, but I needed to have Liam's emotions in a single shot, that he gave me in just two takes," the director revealed. Like audiences will, Neeson empathized with his character’s horrific situation. "As a father, you can't imagine anything worse than your child being put in danger. Of course, you wonder what your own reaction would be in that situation. You picture what you'd do to her kidnappers and you soon come to the conclusion that you'd do anything in your power to save your child. I found this particularly interesting territory, because I'm traditionally against violence, especially the kind of violence Bryan resorts to in the movie. But it's a case of 'them or me' and Bryan takes that situation to its logical conclusion." While "Taken" is a highly fictionalized account of the trafficing of young girls, in real life, in Europe alone, "The Human Trafficing Project reports "officials estimate that more than 200,000 women and girls (one-quarter of all women trafficked globally) are smuggled out of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics each year, the bulk of whom end up working as enslaved prostitutes. Almost half are transported to Western Europe. Roughly a quarter end up in the United States. Human rights activists say the numbers do not tell the full story, because most women remain silent rather than turn to frequently corrupt authorities for help. The rapid rise of this sex slave trade can be traced to the fall of the Soviet Union, where borders once heavily guarded by the Red Army suddenly became porous and Soviet republics and Eastern European satellites once in the Kremlin’s grasp saw their industries and subsidies collapse overnight." In 2001 U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski described the sex trade as "a repugnant and despicable practice that has no place in the 21st century. No human being anywhere in the world should be regarded as a commodity." "Protection Project", based at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, has documented the rising trends in the sex slave trade claiming that Asian women are sold to brothels in North America for $16,000 each and that approx 200,000 girls from Nepal, many of them under the age of 14, are working as sex slaves in India. In 2001 the U.S. research group Protection Project estimated two million women and children are sold into the sex trade every year. In 2003 Channel Four television (U.K.) screened a documentary, "Cutting Edge: The Child Sex Trade". It showed, at the time, how the authorities largely ignore the trafficking of children from eastern Europe. Synopsis

Former CIA operative Bryan Mills is an overprotective father who was never there for his daughter Kim when she was young. His job also cost him his beautiful wife Leonore, who has now remarried. With his daughter just turning 17, Mills is making more time for her and attempting to be the father he never was. Kim and her friend Amanda are on holiday in Paris, France, when Mills calls to check on how they are going. During their conversation, Kim suddendly tells him there are men in the room and that they have her friend. Mills tells her to hide under the bed. The last sounds he hears are her screams as she is dragged off by Albanian thugs involved in the dark world of human trafficking. Mills, relying on his instincts and his CIA training, immediately heads to Paris, France. In a race against time he begins piecing clues together as he attempts to find and rescue his daughter. Mills doesn't hold anything back, ruthlessly proving he is capable of do doing just about anything he can to find and bring his daughter home safely.

The Verdict "It's a nightmare parents hope they never have to face: their child has gone missing. Unfortunately it is happening with terrifying monotony in the 21st century. Now it would be bad enough having your child go missing in your home country, but to have them disappear in a foreign country would be even absolutely devestating. It would be impossible to even imagine the helplessness and heartbreak these parents must go though. All of us are aware of the case of missing three year old Madeleine McCann, who went missing from the Mark Warner Ocean Summer Club holiday complex in the fishing village of Praia da Luz in the western Algarve. Anguished parents Gerry and Kate begged for her return. It was May 4th 2007 when her parents last saw her. "Taken" is a fictional account of one fathers efforts to rescue his daughter from human trafficers who kidnap and then sell or use young girls in the flourishing sex trade. It's a brutal film because, I believe, it reflects the emotions pent up in a caring, concerned society who would like to see real-life scum bag mongrels get the treatment Bryan Mills dishes out. Highly credentialed Irish actor Liam Neeson, who at age 19 worked as a Fork Lift driver at the Guiness Brewery in Ballymena and later dated and lived with Helen Mirren, is the centre-piece of the film. Hard as it may be to believe, Neeson is a bonafide "man's man action hero". His role evokes the type of emotional response not felt since Inspector Harry Callaghan (a.k.a. 'Dirty Harry') dealt out his own brand of justice to the criminal element. Sure at time "Taken" is a little farfetched, but hey, that the licence cinema has when it comes to entertainment, and isn't that what we all crave every time we enter a theatre? To be entertained! And that's the value in seeing "Taken". You will be entertained and you will get your monies worth. It's gritty! It's powerful! It's thought provoking! Very recommended. SOLID 4 STARS." "TAKEN" was .......
directed by Pierre Morel ["The Transporter", "Unleashed" and "Rogue Assassin"]; screenplay by Luc Besson ["Kiss of the Dragon", "Transporter 2" and "Arthur and the Invisibles"] and Robert Mark Kamen ["Kiss of the Dragon", "Transporter" and "Transporter 2"]; costume design by Pamela Lee Incardona ["Double Jeopardy", "Diary of a Sex Addict", "Speakeasy" and "The Visitation"]; production design by Hugues Tissandier ["The Transporter", "Bandidas" and "Arthur and the Invisibles"]; edited by Frédéric Thoraval ["A Monk's Awakening", "Bandidas" and "The Dinner Guest"]; cinematography by Michel Abramowicz ["Part-time Parents", "Michel Vaillant" and "The Secrets"]; original music by Nathaniel Mechaly ["Revolver", "The Secret" and "Melody's Smile"]. Who's Who?

Liam Neeson Maggie Grace Famke Janssen Xander Berkeley Katie Cassidy Olivier Rabourdin Leland Orser Jon Gries David Warshofsky Holly Valance Nathan Rippy Camille Japy Nicolas Giraud Gérard Watkins Rosemary Garris Fani Kolarova Goran Kostic Edwin Kruger Marcus Lindsey Nabil Massad Jalil Naciri Anca Radici Christy Reese Opender Singh Helena Soubeyrand Caitlin Stasey Anatole Taubman

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Bryan Kim Lenore Stuart Amanda Jean Claude Sam Casey Bernie Diva Victor Isabelle Peter Saint Clair Joan Girl (Street Walker) Gregor Jean Claude's assistant LAX Police Officer Cheik Ali Ingrid (Swiss girl) Paper Clerk Singh Girl in trailer Riel Dardan

Run Time 90 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - 20th Century Fox - All Rights Reserved ©2008 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian, International, Copyright & Trademark Laws.