Taken ***

Taken
Twentieth Century Fox
Europa Pictures
Running time: approx 1:30

An intense international thriller set mostly in Paris starring veteran Oscar winner Liam Neeson and featuring stunning ingenue Maggie Grace in a supporting role as his daughter. Tight, edge-of-seat action that barely pauses to catch one's breath. Highly recommended, even though The New Yorker hated it!

SPOILERS

The plot is fictitious, but the problem of a thriving European sex trade is real, with women from the East delivered to wealthier countries in the West. I read about it in a long New Yorker article last fall. However, I found the idea of a regular system of kidnapping young Western women, including college students, to be unlikely and unrealistic. If two beautiful white American women were truly kidnapped in broad daylight (?) from their Paris flat, that would be an international sensation, causing deep embarrassment to the French government. It would not be tolerated. Yet in the film it is suggested that this is a regular occurrence; the spotter's next target after Kim and Amanda was a Scandinavian woman.

I wondered whether Amanda survived and returned to Los Angeles. I guess we can infer from Neeson's discovery of her in a brothel that she died from an overdose. Very sad.

When Neeson first met and pretended to extort the Albanians, wouldn't they wonder about his insistence on having the conversation in English? I thought that was odd.