Review of Taken

Taken (I) (2008)
Daddy knows best and France is dangerous
2 June 2009
Warning: Spoilers
This silly but very violent bit of non-sense could be summed up neatly as daddy knows best and France is dangerous. Not much else to the story.

Basically a girl from a well off background gets trapped into the sex slavery market through kidnapping and drugs, while visiting Paris.

The Daddy is some sort of superman super spy who now works as a body guard. He knows all about the world and was immediately worried when his daughter set off to spend some time in Europe with a friend. He knows how dangerous the world is and of course, in the traditional Daddy knows best theme... it turns out that France IS a dangerous country. So, then daddy turns into superman secret agent and kicks butt all over Europe.

If you don't mind pointless violence, like French bashing, the obligatory Arabic sounding bad guys, or if you think that outrage over a daughters abduction justifies torture, murder and other atrocities (shoting some French cop's wife) than, well, perhaps this is your film.

Personally I vacillated between laughing at the stupidity of the premise, thrilled at the display of martial arts, and at the same time disgusted over the film's violence.

Regarding the stupidity of the premise, I should explain that there is a terrible irony in the depiction of Europe as dangerous when the murder rate is 3.6 times higher in the US than in France. In addition, sexual slavery often involves importing 3rd world women into the US (and into France for that matter); not kidnapping well off US kids in France.
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