10++++ / 10
Taken is the best pure action film of the twenty-first century. Pierre Morel directed it in thirty-six days in Paris on a twenty-five million dollar budget. The film grossed two hundred twenty-six million dollars worldwide. Liam Neeson was fifty-six years old when he played Bryan Mills. He had been a respected dramatic actor for two decades and was not considered an action star. Taken transformed him into the most reliable action lead of his generation. The film accidentally created the late-career-Neeson genre that has produced approximately one film per year for the past fifteen years. None of the subsequent films have matched the original.
The 10++++ rating is honest. The film does one thing and does it perfectly. There is no fat. There is no filler. There is no subplot that wastes time. The screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen identifies the dramatic question in the opening fifteen minutes and answers it efficiently for the remainder of the runtime. The result is ninety-three minutes of pure action storytelling that respects the audience by refusing to waste a single scene on anything that does not advance the central pursuit.
The Setup
Bryan Mills is a retired CIA operative who has relocated to Los Angeles to be closer to his teenage daughter Kim. His ex-wife Lenore has remarried a wealthy businessman who has been providing Kim with the kind of life Bryan’s intelligence career never could. Bryan is struggling to reconnect with his daughter. Kim is seventeen. Kim wants to travel to Paris with a friend named Amanda to follow U2 across Europe. Bryan reluctantly signs the permission form after extracting promises about her safety.
Kim and Amanda arrive in Paris. They share a taxi from the airport with an Albanian man named Peter. Peter tells the trafficking ring where the two American girls are staying. Albanian operatives kidnap both girls from the apartment. Kim manages to call her father during the abduction. Bryan listens to his daughter being taken. The famous phone speech follows. Bryan tells the kidnappers that he has a very particular set of skills, that he will find them, and that he will kill them. The kidnappers do not believe him. The remaining seventy-eight minutes of the film demonstrate that they should have believed him.
The Phone Call
The phone call is the structural pivot of the film and the most quoted action movie dialogue of the past twenty years. Bryan is on the phone with Kim when the kidnappers enter the apartment. Bryan tells Kim to hide under the bed. He tells her to be quiet. He tells her what to do when she is caught. He tells her to call out the specific details of the men taking her. He tells her, when one of the kidnappers grabs the phone, to say what she just witnessed. Kim recites height, build, hair color, and the fragment of language she heard.
Bryan then speaks to the kidnapper. The dialogue is one of the most precise action movie monologues ever written. Bryan announces that he does not know who they are. He announces that he does not know what they want. He announces that if they want ransom he does not have money. He announces that he has a very particular set of skills acquired over a long career. He announces that those skills make him a nightmare for people like the kidnapper. He announces that if they release his daughter now, that will be the end of it. He announces that if they do not release her, he will look for them, he will find them, and he will kill them.
The kidnapper says “good luck” and hangs up. The kidnapper’s response is one of the great action movie misjudgments. The kidnapper does not believe what he has just been told. The kidnapper is about to learn that he should have believed it. The remainder of the film is the demonstration. Bryan does what he said he would do. The kidnapper and everyone associated with him pays for the dismissive response to a direct warning.
The phone call works because Neeson delivers it without theatrical excess. The voice does not rise. The voice does not break. The voice is the controlled voice of a man explaining the consequences of an action that has already been taken. The performance choice is what elevates the dialogue from genre cliché to genuine threat. Other actors might have shouted. Other actors might have wept. Neeson stated. The statement is the threat.
For Writers
The Taken phone call demonstrates how dialogue can carry threat through restraint rather than through volume. Bryan does not shout. Bryan does not curse. Bryan does not deliver theatrical proclamations. Bryan announces facts with the calm of a man stating what is going to happen. The calm is the threat. The audience understands that anyone who can announce kidnap consequences this calmly is a person whose consequences will be substantial. The lesson for writers is that quiet dialogue can carry more menace than loud dialogue when the speaker is genuinely dangerous. Dangerous people do not need to perform danger. Their danger is established by their position rather than by their volume. If your character is genuinely dangerous, write the character speaking quietly. The audience will fill in the threat. The audience will respond more strongly to restraint than to performance.
The Neeson Factor
Liam Neeson was the third or fourth choice for the role. Multiple action stars passed on the script before Neeson signed. He reportedly took the role because the production was shooting in Paris and he wanted to spend time in the city with his sons after the death of his wife Natasha Richardson. The role was supposed to be a paycheck and a vacation. The role became one of the defining performances of his career.
Neeson had previously been known for Schindler’s List, Rob Roy, Michael Collins, and Star Wars Episode I. He was a serious dramatic actor with the bearing of an old-school leading man. The casting director realized that this bearing would translate to action material if the character were calibrated for older masculine authority rather than for younger physical theatrics. The realization was correct. Bryan Mills is a fifty-six-year-old man who can still execute professional violence because of training, discipline, and the patient experience of having done this work for decades. Neeson plays the character as a competent professional rather than as a flashy action hero. The choice is the casting innovation.
The performance also benefits from Neeson’s natural physical presence. He stands six feet four inches tall. He moves with the bulk of a man whose physicality has settled into solid weight rather than into youthful agility. The combination of size and age produces a Bryan Mills who threatens through gravity rather than through quickness. The fight choreography respects the physical reality. Bryan does not perform balletic combat. Bryan delivers efficient violence designed to incapacitate or kill as quickly as available means allow.
The Action Choreography
Pierre Morel had been a cinematographer before he became a director. Taken was his second directorial credit. The action choreography follows the visual style established by Morel’s previous film District B13 and by Luc Besson’s broader production company EuropaCorp. The fights are fast, brutal, and efficient. The cinematography stays close to the action. The cutting rhythm maintains spatial logic even when the cuts are fast. Audiences can follow what is happening throughout each combat sequence.
The torture sequence with the Albanian named Marko is one of the most quoted action sequences in modern cinema. Bryan has tracked the trafficking ring to a Paris building. He has captured Marko, who was one of the kidnappers in the apartment. Bryan ties Marko to a chair, runs wires through his thighs, and connects the wires to the building’s electrical system. He asks questions. Marko provides answers. Bryan walks away leaving Marko electrocuted in the chair as the wires remain connected. The sequence operates with the clinical precision of professional interrogation.
The construction site sequence and the auction sequence are similarly economical. Bryan enters dangerous environments with specific tactical preparation. Bryan executes the necessary violence to retrieve information or to neutralize threats. Bryan exits before reinforcements can arrive. The pattern repeats across the runtime with variations specific to each location. The repetition is satisfying rather than monotonous because each variation generates new tactical specifics the previous sequences had not deployed.
The Auction
The auction sequence is the structural climax of the second act. Bryan has tracked the trafficking ring’s distribution chain. The chain ends with private auctions of trafficked women to wealthy buyers in Paris. Bryan infiltrates the auction by posing as a buyer. He sees his daughter being offered for sale to a Saudi businessman. Bryan attempts to intervene. The intervention triggers the climactic sequence in which Bryan must retrieve his daughter from a private yacht moored on the Seine.
The auction sequence is the moment the film acknowledges the actual subject matter that the rest of the runtime has been operating around. The film is basically about sex trafficking. The plot mechanics deliver violence and pursuit. The substance underneath the plot is the trade in trafficked women that Bryan has been disrupting throughout the runtime. The auction makes the substance visible. The film does not flinch from showing what is being sold. The film also does not exploit the imagery beyond what the dramatic content requires.
The decision to handle trafficking as the subject matter was unusual for a 2008 action film. Most action films of the era used kidnapping plots without engaging with the broader industry the kidnapping would lead to. Taken made the broader industry the structural target of the pursuit. Bryan is not just rescuing his daughter. Bryan is destroying every level of the operation that produced her capture. The dramatic stakes are personal. The substantive stakes are systemic.
The Pacing
The film runs ninety-three minutes. Every minute does work. The opening establishes Bryan’s character through observation rather than through exposition. The audience sees him doing private security for a pop star. The audience sees him interacting with his retired CIA colleagues. The audience sees him struggling to connect with his daughter. The audience receives complete characterization within fifteen minutes of screen time.
The kidnapping happens at the twenty-eight-minute mark. The investigation phase runs until approximately the sixty-minute mark. The retrieval phase runs from the sixty-minute mark to the ninety-minute mark. The denouement runs three minutes. The structural distribution is precise. The film does not waste runtime on subplots. The film does not waste runtime on character development for secondary figures. The film does not waste runtime on romantic complications. Every minute serves the central pursuit.
The pacing discipline is the central craft achievement of the film. Most action films inflate to two hours because the producers believe audiences want more for their money. Taken refused the inflation. The result is a film that maintains tension across its entire runtime without the pacing collapses that plague longer action productions. Audiences who have watched the film multiple times often note that the film feels shorter on rewatch than the actual runtime suggests. The compression produces the perceptual effect.
For Writers
Taken demonstrates the value of refusing to inflate a story beyond what the story actually requires. The film could have been padded to two hours with subplots, secondary characters, romantic complications, and additional set pieces. Pierre Morel and Luc Besson refused all of the padding. They identified what the story needed and delivered exactly that, no more. The result is a film that feels lean and propulsive in ways that longer action films cannot match. The lesson for writers is that brevity is a craft skill. A novel that delivers what it needs in three hundred pages is stronger than a novel that delivers the same content stretched to five hundred pages. The discipline to cut what does not advance the central concern is the discipline that produces the cleanest work. Most writers do not have this discipline. The work that does have it stands out by contrast.
The Albanians
The villains are Albanian human traffickers. The choice is specific. The Albanian trafficking networks operating in Western Europe in the early 2000s were genuine criminal organizations with documented histories. The film draws on actual law enforcement intelligence about how these networks operated. The Albanians in the film are not invented adversaries. The Albanians are real organizations whose specific methods the film accurately depicts.
The choice has been criticized for ethnic specificity. The film names a specific ethnic group as the antagonists. Some viewers have argued that this damages Albanian communities by association. The defense is that the network depicted in the film actually existed and that pretending the network did not exist would not honor the actual victims of the actual trafficking. The film treats the Albanian characters as criminals rather than as representatives of Albanian people generally. Bryan does not target Albanians indiscriminately. Bryan targets the specific operation that took his daughter. Other Albanian characters in the film are not implicated.
The casting of the Albanian roles is uniformly strong. Arben Bajraktaraj as Marko delivers one of the more memorable secondary villain performances in the film. The actor brings physical menace and specific Albanian regional vocal characteristics that ground the character in the actual culture rather than in generic European villainy. The supporting Albanians similarly bring specific casting that elevates the material above what generic villain performances would have produced.
The French Connection
The film was produced by Luc Besson’s French production company EuropaCorp. Besson had built EuropaCorp into one of the most prolific European production operations of the 1990s and 2000s. The company specialized in efficient genre productions filmed in Paris and the surrounding regions. EuropaCorp’s house style emphasized action choreography, location authenticity, and tight runtimes. Taken is the company’s most successful production.
The Paris location work is genuine. The film was filmed in actual Paris streets, actual Paris buildings, and actual Paris suburbs. The city becomes a character through the production’s commitment to physical location shooting. Bryan handles the actual geography of Paris. The chase sequences use actual streets. The Seine sequences use the actual river. The visual authenticity gives the film a texture that studio productions cannot match.
The French police investigation handled by Inspector Jean-Claude Pitrel, played by Olivier Rabourdin, provides the procedural counterpoint to Bryan’s vigilante pursuit. Pitrel is a former CIA contact who has retired into French law enforcement. Bryan exploits the relationship to access investigative resources Bryan himself no longer has. The interaction also generates the film’s brief acknowledgment that Bryan’s methods are not acceptable in normal law enforcement contexts. Pitrel is sympathetic but cannot officially support what Bryan is doing. The conflict produces one of the film’s more interesting character relationships.
The Sequels Problem
Taken 2 arrived in 2012. Olivier Megaton directed instead of Morel. The film is set in Istanbul and follows the Albanian father of one of the men Bryan killed in the original as he seeks revenge. The sequel is competent action filmmaking that does not match the original. The pacing is looser. The action choreography is less precise. The dramatic stakes are weaker because Bryan is now the established competent operative rather than the underestimated newcomer. The film grossed three hundred seventy-six million dollars on a budget of forty-five million dollars. The commercial success exceeded the original. The critical reception did not.
Taken 3 arrived in 2014. Olivier Megaton directed again. The film is set in Los Angeles and follows Bryan as he is framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore. The third film abandons the human trafficking framework entirely and operates as a generic fugitive thriller. The film grossed three hundred twenty-six million dollars on a forty-eight million dollar budget. The commercial success again exceeded the actual quality of the work. The franchise had effectively run out of ideas by the third film.
The television series Taken arrived in 2017. The series follows a younger Bryan Mills as a CIA operative in the years before the events of the film. The series ran for two seasons and was canceled. The series is not necessary viewing. The film franchise is best treated as the original Taken plus two diminishing sequels and an unnecessary prequel television series. Audiences should watch the original. The remaining material can be safely ignored.
Craft Note
Craft Note
Taken is the example case for action cinema that respects its audience by refusing to waste their time. Most action films pad their runtimes with subplots, romantic complications, secondary character development, and additional set pieces designed to justify the ticket price. Pierre Morel refused all of the padding. He identified the dramatic question, answered it efficiently, and ended the film when the answer was delivered. The result is ninety-three minutes of pure pursuit storytelling that maintains tension across every single minute. The choice required confidence. Most producers would have demanded additional content. Luc Besson protected the production’s discipline because his EuropaCorp house style had taught him that compressed action delivers stronger response than inflated action. The lesson for writers is that the strongest version of any action story is usually shorter than the writer’s first instinct suggests. Cut the subplots. Cut the romantic complications. Cut the additional set pieces. Deliver the central story and end. Audiences will respond to compression in ways they will not respond to inflation. Taken demonstrates the principle at maximum strength. Every action writer should study the film for its pacing discipline alone.
The Verdict
A 10++++. Taken is the best pure action film of the twenty-first century. Pierre Morel directed it with the kind of precision that most action filmmakers spend entire careers attempting to achieve. Liam Neeson delivered the performance that transformed his career and created the late-career action genre that subsequent productions have been mining for fifteen years. The Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen screenplay is one of the leanest action screenplays of the past two decades. The phone call dialogue is permanent vocabulary in popular culture. The Paris location work grounds the film in actual geography. The pacing discipline produces ninety-three minutes of compressed propulsion that no subsequent action film has matched at the same runtime.
I have watched the film many times. The phone call still works. The torture sequence still works. The auction sequence still works. The yacht sequence still works. The film does not age because the dramatic compression is the substance. Compressed material does not have time to age. The film simply happens, ends, and waits to be rewatched. Audiences who have not seen it should see it. Audiences who have seen it should see it again. The sequels can be skipped. The original is enough.
FAQ
Did Neeson really get cast as third choice?
Approximately. Multiple action stars passed on the script before Neeson signed. The exact order has varied in different accounts. Neeson reportedly took the role because the production was shooting in Paris and he wanted to spend time in the city after the death of his wife Natasha Richardson. The role was meant as a paycheck and a vacation. The role became one of the defining performances of his career.
What is the phone call dialogue?
Bryan tells the kidnapper that he does not know who they are, does not know what they want, that he has no money to pay ransom, but that he has a very particular set of skills acquired over a long career, that those skills make him a nightmare for people like the kidnapper, and that if the kidnapper releases his daughter now, that will be the end of it. He concludes by announcing that if the kidnapper does not release her, he will look for them, he will find them, and he will kill them.
How long is the film?
Ninety-three minutes. The compression is one of the film’s defining craft achievements. Most action films inflate to two hours or longer. Taken refuses the inflation. The result is a film that maintains tension across its entire runtime without the pacing collapses that plague longer action productions.
Are the Albanian traffickers based on real organizations?
Yes. The Albanian human trafficking networks operating in Western Europe during the early 2000s were genuine criminal organizations with documented histories. The film draws on actual law enforcement intelligence about how these networks operated. The specific methods depicted in the film are accurate to actual trafficking operations.
Should I watch the sequels?
No. Taken 2 and Taken 3 are competent but diminishing. The sequels abandon the dramatic compression that made the original work and inflate to conventional action film runtimes. The television series is not necessary viewing either. The original film is enough.
How violent is the film?
Substantially. Bryan kills approximately thirty-five people across the runtime. The violence is not graphic in the gratuitous sense but is consistent in its efficiency. The film also depicts human trafficking, including drug use, sexual coercion, and auction of trafficked women. The content is appropriate for adult audiences. Younger viewers should approach the material with parental judgment.
Who is the woman at the auction?
The film leaves the identity of the wealthy Arab buyer deliberately vague. The character is named Sheik Raman in some materials but is largely unidentified in the film itself. The function of the character is to demonstrate the international scale of the trafficking operation rather than to develop the character’s individual identity.
Did this film really transform Neeson’s career?
Completely. Before Taken, Neeson was a respected dramatic actor. After Taken, Neeson became the most reliable action lead of his generation. He has made approximately one action film per year for the past fifteen years. None of the subsequent films have matched Taken. The original transformed audience expectations of what kind of work Neeson could deliver.
Where was it filmed?
Paris and Los Angeles primarily. The Paris location work is genuine. The film was filmed in actual Paris streets, actual Paris buildings, and actual Paris suburbs. The city becomes a character through the production’s commitment to physical location shooting. The Los Angeles material is more limited and serves primarily to establish Bryan’s domestic situation before the kidnapping.
How much money did it make?
Two hundred twenty-six million dollars worldwide on a twenty-five million dollar budget. The return on investment was substantial. The commercial success enabled the sequels and the broader Neeson action career that followed. The film was one of the most profitable action productions of the late 2000s.
What is the EuropaCorp connection?
Luc Besson produced the film through his French production company EuropaCorp. The company specialized in efficient genre productions filmed in Paris. The house style emphasized action choreography, location authenticity, and tight runtimes. Taken is the company’s most commercially successful production. Other EuropaCorp films include the Transporter series, District B13, and the Lucy production. The house style is recognizable across the catalog.