“What I do have is a set of skills…”
There is a lot of badass dialogue in Taken. And most of it is good, especially that one phone call we’ve all seen in the trailers. And there are some very badass non-dialogue moments, stuff straight out of 24 or the Bourne movies. And being a massive fan of the badass movie moments, as I am, perhaps one would think I would give this a better rating. However, being the massive fan of badass movies that I am, I watched this in a way I imagine virtually no one else watching. I kept picturing Steven Seagal in the Liam Neeson role.
Let me explain - about thirty minutes into the movie, I got the nagging feeling that I had seen this film before. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, until Liam Neeson walked into a black-tie party and started killing everyone. And then it hit me - I have seen this before. The European locale, the exotic locations, the unstoppable one-man wrecking crew murdering dozens of people as he attempts to rescue his daughter from a human trafficking network, the conspiratorial involvement in the scheme by local authorities, the arm-breaking and neck-breaking behind the scenes of a black-tie fancy gala…this is a Steven Seagal direct-to-DVD film called Out Of Reach. In that movie, Seagal’s pen-pal in a foster program, a young girl, is kidnapped by human traffickers. In Taken, it’s Liam Neeson’s daughter. That might be the biggest difference between the two.
Now, that being said, of course Taken is a better film that Out Of Reach. A Seagal movie that involves international intrigue is almost always dreadful, usually makes very little sense, and it’s chaotic and confusing and the villains are cartoons. The main difference here is that Taken does make sense, and the villains are not cartoons but rather cardboard cutouts that pop up in a shooting gallery. We don’t get to meet the villains long enough for them to become cartoons. Liam Neeson kills them too quickly.
I like Liam Neeson. I think he’s a terrific actor. But a movie like this certainly doesn’t play to his strong suits. The one-man army who tears through Paris to find his kidnapped daughter is, really, a role better suited to Seagal. And Taken is, really, a slicker, more polished Seagal movie. Seagal could deliver the badass lines as well as Neeson. There is even a moment where Neeson attempts nonchalance while torturing a guy where I thought Seagal would have done that better. This is not a movie that requires an actor, and the director does not let Neeson be one. It is a role that requires an impassive man capable of breaking arms and shooting people. That’s all. And that isn’t Liam Neeson, it’s Steven Seagal.
