Review: Taken

Playing ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills, Liam Neeson channels Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorizing star of Fox TV’s “24” played by Kiefer Sutherland. Bryan retired from the Agency—”I was a preventer: I prevented bad things from happening”—and relocated, trying to get back into the life of his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). She lives with his ex (Famke Janssen) and a super-rich step-dad who buys her a horse for her seventeenth birthday. Geez, how can an absentee dad match that, let alone make up for all the lost time he spent in the undercover service of his country overseas? Easy. Make a gift of his lethal stealth and torture techniques he picked up on the job. The window of opportunity opens when Kim gets herself kidnapped by an Albanian sex slave ring within an hour of landing in Paris. Kim and a gal pal planned to follow U2’s summer European tour, but instead she gets a Grand Tour of the Parisian netherworld where obese Arabs bid for veiled virgins to bed on their yachts. Director Pierre Morel (“District 13”) and co-writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (who take credit for scripting all three “Transporter”s) deliver slick, risible action thrills. Good fun for Francophobes in the Father’s Rights crowd. With Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Katie Cassidy and Holly Valance. 91m. Widescreen. (Bill Stamets)