Snooze Review of Taken

I like to go to late movies, and usually I have a couple beers before hand. Sometimes I fall asleep when a movie isn’t interesting enough. So, I have devised a rating system based on sleep. A rating of 1 through 3 Snooze designates how bad the movie was and how many naps I took. A rating of one through three beers is how many beers I needed to unwind and sleep after a great movie.

You’ll probably be surprised—I have to give Taken a one-snooze review. I am shocked too, since the preview was so captivating.

I like the straightforward premise, and the fact it has some association with the Professional. Ex-military spook-type’s daughter (who, of course, he loves dearly as the first 15 minutes of the movie painfully show), is abducted in Paris for, get this, an Albanian forced prostitution ring.

So, the plot is thin, but that was supposed to be the point. Simple plot. Classic. Good guy hunts down bad guys and saves the Princess. Liam Neeson as total badass. Got it.

So, why did I fall asleep right during the middle when he was already well into the chase? There was nothing spectacular or interesting about any of the characters. The trite foreign bad guys. The cute but sensitive teen daughter. The overly-worried and naïve mom. Liam speaking soft but firm in that fake whisper, ensuring people they will die despite their best efforts to stop him.

So, maybe the characters, like the plot, are supposed to be straightforward, classic. BUT:

The whole way he hunts these guys down – Paris has 2 million plus people! – is absurd. All he has to go on is a fake name, a voice recording, and his daughter screaming out they have a tattoo and are 6 foot tall. They spare no imaginative leap to make us believe the military-spook types have the power to find anybody, anywhere with the barest clues.

Yet, Neeson doesn’t kick that much ass. His action scenes are typical fare, kicking and choking and shooting. He has a couple fancy moves. But nothing we haven’t seen before. Nothing spectacular. No bloodied and bruised to death’s edge as in Die Hard. No aerial acrobatics like Crouching Tiger. No amazing sniping like the Professional. No Matrix. No crazy chase scenes like Face/Off or the most recent Batman.

It wasn’t Classic. It was re-tread, refried, overdone. I’d seen it all before. And with a thin plot line and weak characters, Neeson’s firm fake whisper couldn’t carry the day. It just put me to sleep. At least once.

One Snooze – Taken