Taken Information

Taken is a 2008 French action thriller film written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, and directed by Pierre Morel. It stars Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Katie Cassidy, Leland Orser, and Holly Valance. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former CIA operative who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter Kim (Grace) and her best friend Amanda (Cassidy) after the two girls are kidnapped by Albanian sex traffickers while traveling in France during a vacation.

Taken grossed more than $226 million. Numerous media outlets have cited the film as a turning point in Neeson's career that redefined and transformed him to an action film star. The film was followed by two sequels"?Taken 2 and Taken 3"?released in 2012 and 2014, respectively. A television series for the series premiered in 2017 on NBC, with Clive Standen portraying Bryan Mills.

Plot

Retired CIA field agent Bryan Mills attempts to build a closer relationship with his 17-year-old daughter Kim, who lives with her mother Lenore and her wealthy stepfather Stuart. While overseeing security at a concert for pop star Sheerah, Bryan saves her from an armed attacker. Out of gratitude, Sheerah offers to have Kim assessed as a singer. Before Bryan can tell her about the offer, Kim asks her father for permission to travel to Paris with her best friend Amanda. As he's wary about Kim's safety since she wants to go on without him, he initially refuses, but eventually agrees. At the airport, Bryan learns the girls are actually planning to follow U2 during their European tour.

Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Kim and Amanda meet Peter, an attractive young Frenchman who offers to share a taxi. Kim and Amanda go to Amanda's cousins' apartment, only for Kim to find that they are in Spain. While she makes a call to Bryan, Kim sees men enter the apartment and abduct Amanda. Kim follows her father's instructions to hide and listen closely. After she is dragged out from underneath a bed, Kim yells a description of her abductor. Bryan hears a person breathing heavily and, realising one of the abductors has picked up the phone, tells him that he will not go after the kidnappers if they release his daughter, but warns them that failure will result in their deaths. A man tersely replies, "Good luck."

Sam, an old friend and former colleague of Bryan, deduces that the kidnappers are part of an Albanian sex trafficking ring and identifies the man as Marko Hoxha. Based on previous history, Kim will disappear for good if not found within 96 hours. Bryan flies to Paris, breaks into the apartment and finds Peter's reflection in a picture on Kim's phone. He finds Peter at the airport and tries to capture him. While fleeing, Peter gets rammed by a truck. With his only lead dead, Bryan turns to an old contact, former French intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel, who now has a desk job. Jean-Claude informs him of the local red-light district where the Albanian prostitution ring operates, but warns him not to get involved. Bryan enters a makeshift brothel in a construction yard, where he rescues a drugged young woman who has Kim's denim jacket. After a gunfight and high-speed chase with the brothel's operators, Bryan takes the woman to a hotel where he treats her with improvised detoxification.

The next morning, the woman tells Bryan of a safe house where she and Kim were kept. Posing as Jean-Claude, Bryan enters the house under the pretense of re-negotiating the police protection rate. When he identifies Marko Hoxha by making him repeat the same phrase as on the phone, the meeting erupts into a fight that results in the death of all gangsters except Marko. A quick search reveals several heavily drugged girls, including a dead Amanda. Bryan ties Marko into a chair and interrogates him using parrilla. Marko reveals that virgins like Kim are sold quickly due to their prized value, and identifies the buyer as Patrice Saint-Clair. Bryan leaves him to die from continuous electrocution and visits Jean-Claude's apartment that evening. Having discovered Jean-Claude's corruption, Bryan injures the latter's wife to coerce him into disclosing Saint-Clair's location.

Bryan infiltrates a covert sex slave auction underway beneath Saint-Clair's manor, where Kim is the subject of the last sale. Bryan forces Ali, an Arab bidder, to purchase her. While making his way out, Bryan is knocked out and chained to a pipe, but manages to escape and eliminate Saint-Clair's henchmen. Saint-Clair reveals a yacht owned by a sheikh named Raman before Bryan murders him. Bryan pursues the yacht and eliminates the bodyguards, including Ali, before encountering Raman in his suite where he is holding Kim at knifepoint. When Raman attempts to negotiate, Bryan kills him with a point-blank headshot. Back in the United States, Kim is reunited with Lenore and Stuart. Lenore reconciles with Bryan and allows him to bond with Kim by visiting Sheerah together.

Cast

• Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills
• Maggie Grace as Kim Mills
• Famke Janssen as Lenore St John
• Katie Cassidy as Amanda
• Leland Orser as Sam Gilroy
• Jon Gries as Mark Casey
• David Warshofsky as Bernie Harris
• Holly Valance as Sheerah
• Xander Berkeley as Stuart St John
• Olivier Rabourdin as Jean-Claude Pitrel
• Grard Watkins as Patrice Saint-Clair
• Arben Bajraktaraj as Marko Hoxha
• Camille Japy as Isabelle
• Nicolas Giraud as Peter
• Goran Kosti? as Gregor
• Nabil Massad as Raman
• Jalil Naciri as Ali

Production

The film was produced by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp. Pierre Morel had previously worked as a director of photography for Besson, and they had also collaborated on Morel's directorial debut, District 13. Besson pitched the idea of Taken one night over dinner and Morel immediately became attached to the idea of a father fighting to protect his daughter. Jeff Bridges was first cast as Bryan Mills, but after he dropped out of the project, Liam Neeson accepted the part, desiring to play a more physically demanding role than he was used to. Neeson at first thought the film to be no more than a "little side road" for his career, expecting it to be released directly to video.

Music

The score of the film was composed by Nathaniel Mchaly and released on 27 January 2009.

Soundtrack

All songs written and composed by Nathaniel Mchaly except where noted.

Reception

A trailer of Taken was released on 20 June 2008. The film saw its release on 27 February in France, 9 April in China and 26 September in UK in the year of 2008. It was released on 30 January in United States and 22 August in Japan in the year of 2009. The film was released under the title of 96 Hours in Germany, Io vi trover (I Will Find You) in Italy and ????????? (Hostage) in Russia.

Box office

Taken grossed $145 million in the North America and $81.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $226.8 million, against a production budget of $25 million.

On its opening day in the North America, the film grossed $9.4 million, scoring the best opening day ever for Super Bowl weekend. It went on to make $24.7 million during its opening weekend playing in 3,183 theaters, with a $7,765 per-theatre average and ranking #1, which was the second highest Super Bowl opening weekend, at the time, behind Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert ($31.1 million). The film is also the highest grossing among the Taken films in North America.

The biggest market in other territories being South Korea, UK, France, Australia and Spain where the film grossed $15.47 million, $11.27 million, $9.43 million, $6.28 million, and $5.46 million respectively.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 58%, based on 168 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Taken is undeniably fun with slick action, but is largely a brainless exercise." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 50 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Richard Corliss of Time said the film "has nothing more on its mind than dozens of bad guys getting beat up and another one turned into instant roadkill." The Washington Post described the film as "a satisfying little thriller as grimly professional as its efficient hero" and likened the action to the Bourne film series. Derek Elley of Variety described the film as a "kick ass, pedal-to-the-metal actioner [...] that wisely doesn't give the viewer any time to ponder the string of unlikely coincidences [...] the film has the forward, devil-may-care momentum of a Bond film on steroids."

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described the film's premise as "unintentionally silly at times [...] Obviously, 'Taken' is not the kind of action film to spend much time worrying about its pedestrian script or largely indifferent acting, so it's fortunate to have Neeson in the starring role." Bryan Mills is characterized as "relentless attack machine who is impervious to fists, bullets and fast-moving cars, he uses a variety of martial arts skills to knock out more opponents than Mike Tyson and casually kill those he doesn't KO".

CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Controversy

In 2011, a self-proclaimed counter-terrorism expert was convicted of wire fraud after claiming the film was based on a real-life incident in which his daughter was killed. William G. Hillar, who pretended to be a retired Green Beret colonel, claimed to have spent more than 12 years lecturing US government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation on security issues. However, records revealed he had actually been a radar operator in the Coast Guard Reserve between 1962 and 1970, and had never been in the US Army. Nevertheless, his website claimed Taken was based on events involving him and his family. Hillar, who admitted the charges, was sentenced to 500 hours of community service at Maryland State Veteran Cemetery. He also agreed to repay $171,000 in speaking fees that he had received from various organizations to which he had presented himself as an expert in terrorism and human trafficking.

Awards

Award	Category	Subject	Result
Broadcast Music, Inc.	BMI Film Music Award	Nathaniel Mchaly
Golden Schmoes Awards	Best Line	Liam Neeson
	Biggest Surprise of the Year	Taken
Saturn Award	Best International Film	Taken

Home media

Taken was released as "Taken (Single-Disc Extended Edition)" on DVDs on 12 May 2009 and on Blu-ray on 9 December 2014. The film also saw release of "Taken (Two-Disc Extended Edition)" on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs on 12 May 2009. , the film has sold 5,388,963 DVDs and 607,073 Blu-ray Discs and grossing $79,798,171 and $10,069,116 respectively totaling $89,867,287 in North America.

In popular culture

• In May 2012, the plot of "Leggo My Meg-O", the twentieth episode of the tenth season of the TV series Family Guy, is based on Taken. In "Brian's a Bad Father", Brian mentions that having Zooey Deschanel cast as the daughter in Taken would be thinking outside the box. A cutaway gag then depicts Bryan Mills (reprised by Liam Neeson) instructing the kidnappers to send him the head of Zooey Deschanel.
• In "Hunt", a fifth-season episode of the TV series Castle, when Richard Castle's daughter Alexis is kidnapped and taken to Paris, Castle follows and Det. Kevin Ryan asks, "Who does he think he is, Liam Neeson?"
• A Saturday Night Live opening sketch on March 8, 2014 (season 39, episode 15) featured Liam Neeson reprising his character from the film in response to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and in defense of President Obama.
• In the animated Cartoon Network series, The Amazing World of Gumball in the episode "The Kids", Gumball calls Mr. Fitzgerald and asks if he can talk to Penny, Mr. Fitzgerald thinks Gumball is being disrespectful to him due to his changing voice, and threatens Gumball by repeating Bryan Mills' phone speech in a scary voice. Later in the episode, Mr. Fitzgerald drives up to Gumball from his car and says the Bryan Mills line to him once more, but Gumball quickly cuts him off when he rolls up his car window, locks the door, and slams it shut in his face.
• In Lego Dimensions, when Bad Cop interacts with Unikitty, Unikitty says she has a particular set of skills. Taken featured Bad Cop's voice actor Liam Neeson in the lead role.
• One of the most popular and best-received commercials of Super Bowl XLIX in February 2015, an ad by Finnish game developer Supercell for its popular game Clash of Clans, featured Neeson parodying his character from Taken.
• In "Red Means Stop", the finale episode of the sixth season of The Venture Bros., The Monarch and Henchman 21 trick Red Death's family into going to his mother-in-law's and call him claiming to have kidnapped them. Before he could finish his speech, Red Death quotes Neeson's "I will find you" speech. The Monarch apologises and slowly hangs up then start to cower for a few seconds.

Sequels

In November 2010, Fox announced that EuropaCorp would produce a sequel directed by Olivier Megaton. Taken 2 was subsequently released in France on 3 October 2012, with Neeson, Janssen, Grace, Gries, Rabourdin and Orser reprising their roles from the first film. A third Taken film was released 16 December 2014.

Television series

In September 2015, NBC ordered a prequel series depicting a younger Bryan Mills with Clive Standen portraying Mills, Gaius Charles, Monique Gabriela Curnen, James Landry Hebert, Michael Irby, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Jennifer Marsala and Simu Liu are cast as John, Vlasik, Casey, Scott, Dave, Riley and Faaron, members of OPCON. Brooklyn Sudano is cast as Asha, an attractive, well-educated young student from an upper-middle-class family who is furthering her education when she first meets Bryan and Jennifer Beals is cast as Christina Hart, the Special Deputy Director of National Intelligence who has taken Mills under her wing. Cultured and powerful with a wealth of field experience, her current government position has her overseeing an elite team of operatives who take care of America"?s national security emergencies. Alexander Cary will be the writer, executive producer and showrunner for the series and Alex Graves directing the pilot.