Taken

What happens when the foreigners of the world kidnap America's teenage daughters to use as sex slaves? America sends Liam Neeson to kick their fucking ass.

Gripes:

My biggest gripe has to be with the green screen shots of people driving. They look like something out of Sinefeild. 1990 called, they want their greenscreen back. Also the girl playing the daughter was like 40 and kind of annoying so it was hard to beleive she was so naive and it was kind of okay that she got kidnapped and turned into a sex slave. Poor casting.

Overall I don't have a lot gripes with this films. It does what it advertises; Liam Neeson's daughter gets kidnapped and so he goes and kicks the kidnappers ass. These are the worst anti-American kidnapers, they're based in France, they're Albanian, in cahoots with corrupt French spies, that sell virgin American daughters to Middle-Eastern sheiks via corrupt business men. American headline fears rolled up into one neat package, I'm surprised they weren't doing it to encourage Global Warming. Retired CIA special Operative Liam Neeson goes after them, tortures them, kills them, and finally delivers his daughter into the hands of an American teen pop star analogue to get career training. Ironically his daughter's kidnapping experiences have given her some of the training to be an American Teen pop star already, half naked dancing and all. So in a way Neason saves his daughter from being pimped out to Saudi Sheiks to be pimped out to the American public. USA USA USA.

What worked:
It feels good. Seeing foreign terrorists and their like get horribly killed by mild-mannered Neeson is strangely satisfying. Every man in that theatre could sympathise with Neason, if it was my daughter I would do the same. Of course I'm not a CIA operative so probably I would just roll up on the floor and cry and call the police or something.

Neason is a good action star. He creates a real three dimensional person here not just some mindless killing machine and it helped to get me involved in the story because the script certainly didn't.

Mediocrity Scale:
Just Above Mediocre

Better than D&D:
Yes, cohesive story and cathartic violence.

Food:
Awful Awful things. 5 Pogos which are disgusting in themselves but washed down with a horrible abomination that Jason brought from the USA; A&W rootbeer float in a bottle. All the goodness of a Root beer float, in a bottle. It was super sweet. Like cheap ice cream that melted in root beer syrup, then was left out in the sun until rotted. It made me want to barf. If someone asked "what is robot jizz like?" I would point them in the direction of A&W rootbeer float in a bottle.