L'enlèvement

"Taken," which tells the story of how Liam Neeson blows a gasket and flies off to France and kills 75 Albanians in 90 minutes, is crisp, efficient and deeply insane. Neeson, who now resembles an aging Labrador retriever, all angles and mournful eyes and jumpy eagerness, plays a former CIA spook whose clandestine career bled into his home and made blood sausage of his family. His wife has divorced him, taken their 17-year-old daughter and remarried. She now lives a life of entitlement behind the stone walls of a Los Angeles mansion, the estate of her new industrialist husband. Neeson's character, Bryan Mills, is so protective of his daughter that he moves to L.A. to be within reach of her. He is paranoid about the potential dangers, and so humorless he could be played for parody - thankfully, though, St. Guilty Pleasure has shined upon us, and this thing is serious.