Taken (film)

Taken is a 2008 action thriller film produced by Luc Besson, starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, and Famke Janssen. The screenplay is written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, and was directed by Pierre Morel. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former Central Intelligence Agency SAD operative who sets about tracking down his daughter after she is kidnapped by Albanian sex traders while travelling in France.

Plot

Highly-trained and skilled CIA black ops agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has retired in an effort to build a closer relationship with his 17 year old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). His frequent absences made him a distant father and led to his divorce. Knowing Kim wants to be a singer, Bryan buys her an expensive karaoke machine for her 17th birthday, which she is pleased with. Kim's wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley), however, upstages Bryan when he surprises her with a horse. Later, Bryan's former CIA colleague, Sam (Leland Orser), hires him to help provide concert security for a pop singer, Sheerah (Holly Valance). While backstage before the concert, Bryan voices Kim's interest in becoming a singer, to which Sheerah offhandedly replies, "Tell her to pick another career." After the concert, a mob of fans rush through an open gate and security hold them back while Bryan escorts Sheerah to the waiting vehicle. A knife-wielding assailant attacks Sheerah and Bryan quickly disarms him by breaking his arm. Sheerah then gratefully offers to help with Kim's musical aspirations if she has talent.

The next day, Bryan's ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen) and Kim set up a lunch in order to persuade Bryan to sign a visa form to allow Kim to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy), claiming that it is to visit museums. Bryan refuses because he believes Kim is too young and naïve to be traveling around Paris with only a 19-year old for company; Kim runs from the table in tears. After Lenore implores him further, he agrees on the condition that Kim follow a strict set of rules he has set for her himself. To his consternation, he discovers at the airport that the girls actually intend to follow U2's Vertigo Tour around Europe and that Lenore knew this all along.

Shortly after arriving in Paris, Kim and Amanda meet Peter (Nicolas Giraud), a charming and handsome Parisian stranger who suggests sharing a taxi from the airport. Peter learns that they are staying alone in Amanda's cousins' apartment and invites them to a party later that evening. After they part, Peter phones someone and passes along information about the girls. Kim, not knowing that she and Amanda would be alone in the apartment, inquires as to where the cousins are. Amanda says the cousins are on vacation in Spain and giddily announces her plans to have sex with Peter.

Bryan calls Kim and complains that she did not call him. While they are speaking on the phone, Kim sees several men enter the apartment and abduct Amanda and reveals that they shared the taxi with Peter. Bryan starts recording the call, and instructs Kim to hide under the bed and to shout out information about the kidnappers when they come for her. She yells out the description of the men as she is taken. Afterward, Bryan realizes that someone has picked up the phone and is listening, and tells him that if he lets his daughter go, he will not pursue them, but if they take her, "I will look for you, I WILL find you, and I will kill you." The listener coldly replies, "Good luck" and destroys the phone. Bryan sends the recording to Sam to have it analyzed; he determines that the abductors are likely part of the Albanian Mafia, which specializes in sex slavery by kidnapping young female tourists. Sam says that the man Bryan spoke to is Marko Hoxha, a mobster boss. He tells Bryan and Lenore a chilling statistic: that they have a rescue window of 96 hours (four days), after which Kim will likely disappear forever. Utilizing Stuart's connections with plane leasing company NetJets, Bryan flies to Paris that very evening.

Upon arrival, he heads to the apartment, where he finds his first clue: a photograph of Peter on the memory card of Kim's smashed cellphone. He finds Peter as he is charming another potential victim, a young Swedish girl outside the airport. Bryan forces his way into a cab with Peter and punches him in the ribs while he attempts to interrogate him when Peter's co-spotter attacks him. Bryan violently subdues him and chases after Peter as he escapes. After a short chase, Peter is struck and killed by a truck on the highway after jumping from the overpass. Bryan then seeks help from an old friend, Jean-Claude (Olivier Rabourdin), previously a field agent with French Intelligence, but now working a desk job. Jean-Claude tells Bryan that the Albanian Mafia has been moving into Paris in large numbers over the years. He then tells Bryan where to start looking, but warns him not to make a mess, soon after he calls someone to tail Bryan. Bryan hires an Albanian-English interpreter, and, to get the attention of the Albanian mobsters, accosts a prostitute, causing one of the mobsters to come over and demand money for two lost clients, not noticing when Bryan plants a listening device on the back of his collar. Using the interpreter, he follows the mobster to a construction site and poses as a worker to enter a makeshift brothel there. After searching he comes across a young, very heavily doped up girl who has his daughter's jacket draped over a chair in her cubicle and takes her with him. After a lengthy car chase, during which several Albanian mobsters are killed and a trailer is destroyed, Bryan loses them, as well as the tail Jean-Claude had secretly placed on him. He checks in at an inn named Hotel Camelia run by a friend and administers an IV to counteract the drugs in the girl's system.

Jean-Claude demands a meeting with Bryan out in the open by the river. When Jean-Claude arrives, his cell phone rings. It is Bryan saying he doesn't trust meeting Jean-Claude (until he gets Kim back). Jean-Claude says his boss hit the roof over the construction site violence and has barely been convinced to authorize a ticket to send Bryan back to America (for previous services aiding the French government) rather than arrest him. Bryan angrily refuses. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude's men have been triangulating the source of Bryan's phone call and home in on its location. There they find a cell phone rigged with a walkie talkie. Bryan is actually on the roof of the nearby Notre Dame de Paris. Back in the hotel, the rescued girl awakens and tells Bryan the address of the house where she met Kim and got the coat. Bryan bluffs his way in using Jean-Claude's business card and pretending to be a corrupt policeman looking for a bribe. He identifies Marko Hoxha by tricking him into saying "good luck", knocks him out and kills all the other gangsters. Searching the upstairs of the house, he finds girls in each room. One of them is Amanda who is dead, apparently from an overdosage of heroin, her hand cuffed to the bed.

Enraged by what he has discovered, Bryan ties Marko to a makeshift electric chair in the basement and interrogates him. Marko's stubbornness and refusal to answer questions breaks under continuous and extremely painful electric shocks and he reveals that Kim was a highly valuable virgin and was sold to a slave dealer named Patrice Saint-Clair (Gérard Watkins). Satisfied that Marko has been honest with him Bryan says, "I believe you, but it's not gonna save you," turns on the electricity and walks out, leaving Marko to die.

Needing more information, Bryan goes to Jean-Claude's home. Jean-Claude admits to accepting bribes to look the other way and tries to force Bryan at gunpoint to give up his search. However, Bryan, who arrived at the home ahead of Jean-Claude, has taken the bullets out of the gun. He then draws his own pistol and shoots Jean-Claude's wife in the arm to pressure Jean-Claude into giving up Saint-Clair's address.

Bryan impersonates a police commissioner to enter an exclusive party at Saint-Clair's mansion, and locates a secret slave auction in the basement where a group of buyers are present. Kim is the last offering. Bryan forces an Arab buyer to purchase her, but is knocked unconscious before he can get away. He awakens handcuffed to a steam pipe. After learning Bryan's motives and stating that he sympathises Saint-Clair orders him killed quietly and leaves. Bryan frees himself, kills Saint-Clair's henchmen, and forces Saint-Clair to divulge Kim's whereabouts by shooting him in the leg and both shoulders. Saint-Clair says she will be brought to a yacht on the Seine owned by an Arabian Shiekh, whom the henchman works for. He pleads for his life, saying that it was only business and not personal. Bryan then empties the remaining bullets into him, saying "it was all personal to me!" Upon his arrival, he sees Kim being forced onto the yacht, and pursues it. He stops on a bridge and jumps aboard as the boat passes under and either kills or knocks out the guards. After a vicious hand-to-hand fight with the buyer (now revealed to be the boss' assistant) he had intimidated earlier, he enters the master bedroom, where he finds a Sheikh named Raman holding a knife to Kim's neck. Raman offers a negotiation, but Bryan shoots him in the head. Reunited with his daughter, Bryan tells a hysterical Kim that he promised he would come for her.

After Kim is reunited with Lenore and Stuart back in Los Angeles, the film concludes with Bryan surprising Kim with a visit to Sheerah's house to help her launch a singing career.

Cast

• Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills
• Maggie Grace as Kim Mills
• Famke Janssen as Lenore "Lennie" Mills
• Xander Berkeley as Stuart
• Katie Cassidy as Amanda
• Leland Orser as Sam
• Olivier Rabourdin as Jean-Claude
• Holly Valance as Sheerah
• Jon Gries as Casey
• David Warshofsky as Bernie
• Nathan Rippy as Victor
• Camille Japy as Isabelle
• Ahmed Hadubai as Israeli Billionaire
• Nicolas Giraud as Peter
• Arben Bajraktaraj as Marko
• Gérard Watkins as Patrice Saint-Clair