Taken

With his daughter (Maggie Grace) abducted by sex traffickers during her very reluctantly dad-approved Parisian vacation, an ex-spy (Liam Neeson) at last has cause to open a 10-gallon drum of whoop-ass. Director Pierre Morel and screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen do know their genre: As with the similar fertile-girl-deadly-daddy dynamics between Alyssa Milano and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, or Natalie Portman and Jean Reno in Besson’s own The Professional, a trace of cartoonishness means to conceal the trace of creepiness. If you can forgive that, and the absurdly high kill count, and the tedious setup involving a fed-up ex-wife (Famke Janssen) and an indebted pop diva (Holly Valance), Grace is adorably rescue-worthy (if emotively manic), and Neeson’s take on the classy bad ass definitely satisfies.