This week's movie has been out for a couple of weeks but I was a little reluctant to see it, expecting a bit of the same old, same old, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was a bit of a hoot, actually. One of those "shoot 'em up with absolutely no legal consequences" sort of things. You know... the movies where the hero is killing scores of bad dudes like flies and getting away with it while the likes of you and me are getting arrested for jaywalking.

Ah, movieland. What a fantastical place:)

Taken treads the familiar territory of a man with “special skills” who finds his family threatened by foolish criminals too stupid to realise they’d picked on the wrong guy.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is a retired spy who has moved to LA determined to make up for lost time with his estranged 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). His ex (Famke Jansen) is married to a wealthy businessman who spoils Kim in a way her father can never compete with, and there’s all that baggage between him and his wife about his job to deal with, which took him away from home so much that he barely knows his own child.

Desperate to reconnect with his daughter, Bryan agrees — against his better judgement — to allow Kim to take a trip to Paris with a girlfriend over the summer break. His fears for his daughter prove well-founded when she is targeted by a group of Albanian sex-slave traders, who prey on innocent young travellers in Paris, almost as soon as she lands in the City of Lights.

Aware that he only has a very narrow window of opportunity before Kim is lost forever, Bryan calls on all his resources, both mental and physical, to identify the kidnappers and retrieve his daughter. He does this with the desperate dedication of a man who cares about just one thing and that one thing —his only child — is threatened.

What follows is a dizzying array of stunts, car chases, fist-fights and shoot-outs in and around Paris, as Bryan bulldozes his way through every contact he has, and every lead he uncovers, to get to his daughter before she is irretrievably lost.

The poster for this film on the way into the cinema had the quote “best action film since Bourne” on it, which I thought was a bit optimistic, but I’d have to come close to agreeing with the sentiment. Neeson does the desperate father thing brilliantly, and if he survives stunts that might flatten a younger man, he at least suffers some injuries in the process. And to be honest, the set up with him and his daughter is sufficiently convincing that you’re quite happy to believe this man is prepared to do anything, and I do mean anything, to protect his daughter. The rest of the cast is just as good (what you see of them), although Maggie Grace hasn’t seen 17 for a number of years now, she manages to pull off the bratty teen thing convincingly enough.

Directed by newcomer, Pierre Morel, who cut his teeth writing such action staples as the Transporter movies, the film is taut, well paced and action-filled. Except for the minor question I had at the end as to why our hero wasn’t rotting in a Parisian goal for mass murder, millions of dollars in property destruction and breaking numerous laws — well, actually, all of them — I found it a pretty entertaining ride.

I found it just a little too unrealistic for my tastes, the fight scenes were good but Liam Neeson weathered the storm too well for it to be believable. Nice light action though.

I enjoyed the lightness of the action. It was entertaining and not intellectually demanding (if I didn't try to think about it). But I thought some of the characterisation was... creepy (and ranted about it at length).