ViewGuide

Created Jan 09, 2009 03:57AM PST • Edited Jan 09, 2009 03:57AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   “Taken” won’t be perhaps the most water-tight examination of international sex-trafficking you’re ever likely to see, but it just about gets the job done as a swift action film (a sorta-hit for this genre’s junkies). For anyone more discerning, these two elements combat and director Pierre Morel winds up with a film technically more satisfying than a 2.5/5 rating would suggest, but one not intellectually rewarding whatsoever. As it turns out, Liam Neeson’s committed central turn might even be considered its saving grace.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Neeson gives an enthralling if arguably un-amazing lead performance, sincere in his determination to retrieve his daughter (Maggie Grace of TV’s “Lost”) following her kidnapping by a group of people traffickers in Paris. He makes as believable as he can a general plot that involves his character using prior experience as a spy to track down and punish his daughter’s abducters, and also find her. Grace offers good support in a major but underwritten role, showing up about twice after the opening twenty minutes and thus not getting much to work with. For the villains, read: one note Euro bad guys.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Visually lush (not necessarily making the most of the setting but doing it some justice) and competently directed if not scripted, the film works on aesthetic thrills more than it does the strength of the screenplay, by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, which is quiet muggy and not entirely likely. Eventually the film evolves into a prolonged shot of adrenaline, viewers invited to sit back and watch Neeson take names and dish out beatings to various baddies.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

    Not likely to gross you out, with little blood for all the on-screen violence, little sex for the ultimate subject matter, and standard level of profanity.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Fierce 2.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 2.0

    Glib through and through, though the film’s more shallow strengths go some way towards entertaining even those who might have wanted something more rewarding than another throwaway action flick (which “Taken” essentially is).

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 2.0

24. Physical Glib 2.0