Taken

Taken is a formula genre thing that goes from 0 to 60 in 20-minutes. Plenty of build up to the point where the film performs, at least to a modicum, as its trailer suggests it's capable. Liam Neeson lives in an obscure apartment in L.A. and dotes on his daughter (Maggie Grace) when his visitation allows. He's ex-CIA and his former work buddies want him to re-up, so to speak.
Taken has played out in Europe and opens domestically briefly, if not spectacularly, on its way to disc sales. We truly live in a time where our cultural benchmarks can be summed up succinctly with phrases such as it doesn't suck. Taken doesn't quite suck.
The whole affair is one of those Luc Besson written and produced dealios that resembles the Transporter series but with a smidgen of character development.
Neeson veers slightly into Man on Fire (the Scott Glenn and or Denzel Washington version) territory and it's not too late for Besson and company to put Neeson and Jason Statham in a movie together immediately.
Set mainly in Paris, the mayhem occurs in small rooms as well as boats on the Seine. At one point I thought Neeson was going to drive a car off a bridge and onto a huge boat. Oh contraire, he stops and parks the car and jumps onto the boat as it sails underneath the bridge. And of course he punches everybody on board to death. Taken provides the requisite thrills the situation demands, and that includes the down time at the beginning. When the bad guys run an Albanian white slave trade the less character back story the better. Don't miss the part where Neeson shoots a colleague's wife in the shoulder. "It's a flesh wound," he sneers.