Taken (2009)

I can't decide if "Taken" is a straight kick-ass action film with Liam Neeson as a vengeful daddy out to fork over the bad guys who kidnapped his precious virgin daughter (Maggie Grace from TV's "Lost"), or if it's a black comedy lampooning how violent America can be. Maybe it's both.

Neeson, despite his cooler-than-Jesus Irish accent, plays a violent American ex-CIA spy who warns his precious teen daughter not to go Paris as part of a summer vacation. Why? Because French people is foreigners, sure 'nuff. Theys bad. The girl is kidnapped second after leaving the airport. Literally, seconds.

The "takers" are not thugs looking for ransom, but nasty dark-skinned men looking to sell the girl into sex slavery to a fat sheik who makes Shrek look as trim as Neeson. Dad goes to Paris and immediately starts a body count greater than any large metro's annual amount, all within 70 or so hours. Even housewives aren't safe.

"Taken" is a quick, easy watch. But don't think too much. Or at all. Would the kidnappers really keep the girl in the same city to auction her off? Did writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen really have to make all the women here either naives, b*tches and sluts who deserve death, whores, or otherwise useless? What if -- by God -- the daughter was in her mid-20s (as Grace so obviously is) and sexually active? Would she still be worth saving? Her friend who is sexually active sure is butchered.

Neeson's unsinkable charisma keeps the film racing through all these questions. Mostly. C+