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The Spy Who Slugged Me

Liam Neeson gets a shot at action hero status in "Taken", a French action flick co-written by Luc Besson and directed by "District B13" helmer Pierre Morel. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired CIA operative. Bryan has given up his long and storied career as a super-spy to be near his teenaged daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Having been absent most of her young life, Bryan is sadly out-of-touch with Kim, who now lives with her mother and millionaire stepfather in a Bel-Air mansion. In the opening scenes of "Taken", we become acquainted with his "attention-to-detail", his deadly skill (in thwarting the would-be assassin of a pop-star client) and the painful divide between Bryan and Kim.

When young, sheltered, sweet Kim asks permission to go to Paris with a friend, Bryan is set against it. He knows how the world can be dangerous for a young girl alone. When Kim pouts and cries and stomps her feet (the much older Grace plays 17 by flailing her arms about and coltishly running to and fro) and decries life as being horribly unfair, Bryan relents. His approval comes with a cell phone and a list of rules she must follow.

Unfortunately, Mr. Attention-to-Detail omits the most important — and basic — piece of advice: Don't take rides from strangers. Being the daughter of a former spy and the stepdaughter of a millionaire industrialist, one would think that Kim would have been given a lesson or two on Stranger Danger. Apparently, this is not the case. Immediately upon landing in Paris, Kim and her friend share a cab with a handsome stranger. He offers to pick them up later to go to a party. Instead, he sends a pack of thugs to abduct the girls from their apartment.

Before Kim can be taken, she manages to call her father and provide him with some sketchy details about the kidnappers. Using his special secret spy-issue equipment and CIA contacts, Bryan discovers she's been taken by a ring of Albanian white slavers. He figures he has 96 hours to find her before she is gone forever. And so, to Paris.

Desperate to save his daughter from a fate worse than death, he is determined to let nothing — and no one — stand in his way. Bryan uses his magical black ops training to piece together the details of the abduction and track down her kidnappers. In a whirlwind of explosions, twisted metal, crushed windpipes and smashed skulls, Albanian baddies are systematically dispatched with deadly force.

A former boxer, Neeson is at his most effective in the bone-crunching hand-to-hand combat scenes. Director Morel keeps the camera close and tight so we miss none of the finger-breaking, gut-punching action. Likewise, the car chases are well-paced and tense. But after a good hour of one scene of death and destruction after another — all of which go completely unnoticed by the Parisian police, by the way — Bryan's relentless, remorseless and surgically precise killing spree descends almost into the realm of self-parody.

Also bordering on comical is the film's simple-minded attitude toward its main characters. One wonders if it's a reflection of the French attitude, or merely lazy writing. Bryan, as a former American operative, has no compunction about torturing captives or shooting the wife of a former colleague to get information. He has no crisis of conscience, no period of desperation, no "all is lost" moment. The attitude towards the city's Albanian population isn't particularly flattering, either. Immigration is a sore spot with the French, and Albanians are portrayed as a plague threatening to destroy all that is Good and Great. Of course, some corrupt French government figures are thrown in the mix so it doesn't look like they're being too racist.

Despite the relentless violence and squeamish subject matter (the horrors of the sex trade), "Taken" is rated PG-13. The filmmakers seem to have managed to get around this by showing very little blood during the fight scenes and softening the sex trade to more of a fancy-dress slave auction, only giving a glimpse into its true, brutal nature. So, you know, now it's a family-friendly descent into the underworld. Perhaps with an R rating, "Taken" could have been more interesting or had more to say. As it is, it's a brutal cartoon of a film that seems as antiquated and out-of-touch as Neeson's character.