Taken

When I first saw the trailer for Liam Neeson's film Taken (2008), I was repulsed. Another movie about sexploitation that mimed the very ills it was alleged to combat, I thought.

Wrong.


It reminded me of George C. Scott in Hardcore (1979), yet another avenging father searching for a daughter lost to the sex trade, in that case snuff films.

I knew there  was some sexual slave trade out there, even trade in children  and sex tourism, but stealing an American woman  from an airport- nah, way too far fetched.

Wrong again.

Believe it or not we're  studying this in nursing school, a group reporting on multiple aspects over a six week span. I've been a captive audience. Cross-reference that with the fact we now tune in every  satellite channel available, and I end up watching Taken.

Why  this is a decent movie... from the first, Neeson is driven. He plausibly reflects  the ruthlessness and impetus required  of an ex CIA agent whose daughter  has been kidnapped by an Albanian gang that traffics in women.Where George C. Scott trailed listlessly through low life low light American landscapes, Neeson embodies a humanized Bond, international, no boundaries, technology or ninja equally at the ready.

A former co-worker  counsels him that statistically he has only 96 hours or less before his daughter is lost forever. Neeson uses every skill honed from years of dark arts, and then some. The film races tautly from Parisian seedy locale to construction site to  uppercrust slave auction, Neeson sparing no mercy, leaving a trail of bodies  efficiently dispatched by various methods, all the while suffering from jet lag.


It's also  decent because it does not seek to exploit the victims portrayed therein. The sad truth is this kind of business really does exist. It's a good action movie, but a  better commentary on an aspect of our society few want to contemplate.