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Taken

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: PG-13
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

January is usually the month where movie studios dump the films that they don’t believe are any good. In the past, the month of January has brought us such stinkers as Code Name: The Cleaner, Epic Movie and Stomp The Yard. So it’s confusing why a film like Taken was released in January. While it’s not a good film by any means, Taken is a moderately entertaining film that is riddled with clichés

Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, a former government agent living in Los Angeles. Bryan has a seventeen-year-old daughter named Kim from a previous marriage, and he retired from his government job so he could be close to her instead of engaging in missions all over the world. Bryan then finds out that Kim plans to spend the summer in Paris, which he is hesitant to allow but eventually gives in. Soon after she arrives, Kim is kidnapped while she’s on the phone with her father, leaving Bryan determined to find his daughter and seek vengeance on the people who took her.

This could’ve been a truly great action movie. Liam Neeson is inspired casting for the lead and he elevates above the limited material he is given. Neeson is the only actor who appeared to put forth an effort, because the rest of the acting is poor, in particular Maggie Grace as his daughter. The film also is extremely cheesy and occasionally unintentionally funny. Each and every plot point is very predictable, and the dialogue is awful.

However, the movie does have some worthwhile moments, and at just under ninety minutes, the film moves quickly. The majority of the good moments are from the action scenes, which is reminiscent of the action in the Bourne trilogy, but still entertaining.

Taken had the potential to be good, but is bogged down by a script desperately in need of rewrites. Liam Neeson does a great job of carrying the movie, but the rest of the cast is annoyingly bad. Taken is one of those movies that isn’t terrible, but it’s extremely frustrating to watch because it could’ve been so much better.