The Word Cloud

 I’ve never done a film review before, nor impersonated a film reviewer; heigh ho, how hard can it be?

 Saturday night I watched ‘Taken’ on TV – a 4 star romp according to the guide and I was in the mood for a good film.

 This is what happens:

 Liam Neeson as Brian (Brian?) is at a loose end. Chooses a karaoke machine for his daughter’s 17^th birthday. Seems he’s been away a lot while she was growing up, doing something secret – ‘working for the government’. His ex-wife (who’s cross with him) has remarried and at the lavish birthday party thrown by the new stepdad, his daughter, Kim, unwraps the Karaoke and throws her arms around him with, ‘Oh Daddy, I love it.’ Liam’s then promptly upstaged by stepdad who leads in a live pony. OK, conflict established.

Seems he does a bit of security work these days. Old workmate persuades him into a spot of body-guarding for a singer at a concert (Holly Valance – I’d just seen her on ‘Strictly’, an hour before. Life really is stranger than fiction).

Liam protects Holly from some upsetness with an excited fan. She’s grateful and when Liam says his daughter wants to be a singer, Holly gives him a phone number. That’s handy. So far, so good.

Cut to scene in café – Liam meets ex-wife and daughter, who want him to sign a consent form so she can travel to Paris, France with her friend. She’s too young, he’s not happy. He signs it.

He takes her to the airport, gives her a mobile phone and makes her promise to phone him all the time. He finds a map in her rucksack with several European cities circled – uh-oh, seems she’s planning more than just Paris – she’s going to follow U2 on tour all over the place. ‘Don’t worry,’ says ex-wife, ‘it’s what girls her age do.’ Yes they do.

Dad says, ‘If anything happens, I’ll come straight over and get you back.’

Anyway, Kim and friend arrive at airport in Paris, France. Bump into ‘Peter’ who offers to share a taxi with them (and so knows where they’re staying!). Peter drops them off then makes a sinister phone call: ‘Two fresh ones, just arrived!’

Kim and friend explore the apartment as Liam phones, ‘Hey, you promised to phone me when you landed.’

‘Sorry Daddy, I forgot.’

As Kim walks about the apartment talking on the phone, and before she can give her new address, she sees her friend attacked and snatched from another room. She tells Liam that the only person who knows where they are is ‘Peter’, who they met at the airport. She relates the struggle to Liam who instructs her to crawl under a bed and tell him everything she sees, and to leave the phone open so he can hear what’s going on. She does. She sees feet. She’s snatched too. The men are speaking some foreign language that nobody knows.

Liam, over in California, leaps into action. Happily, his old CIA recording equipment is to hand and while she’s on the phone, he plumbs it in. A foreigner picks up Kim's phone and Liam tells him to let her go or he’ll come over and kill him. Ominous.

Foreigner says, ‘Good Luck’ in a sinister swarthy accent and crushes the phone.

Liam hurtles over there, faster than a comet. It’s not like California is the other side of the world or anything. He has 96 hours to find his daughter, or she’s lost for good [Govt Stats].

He arrives at their Paris flat a few short minutes later; as quickly as anyone arriving at a foreign airport. Not sure how he knows where it is – I might have clocked out for a second there. He gains entry (not sure about that, either) and paces through the rooms, replete with signs of struggles. He crawls under the bed where his daughter must have been, to see what he can see. Oh look! There’s the crushed phone that she was talking on – and the sim card intact. What a stroke of luck. He also pulls – er, something – from the cracked mirror – a few black hairs? Dunno what that was about – they don’t appear again.

Anyway, he gets a photo off the sim card – the one Peter took of the two girls at the airport. He enlarges it and hey presto, there’s the hazy image of Peter taking the pic – reflected in a phone box next to the girls. Phew!

Liam returns to the airport with the photo and sits in a bar, watching. A pretty Swedish tourist arrives and would you credit it? Peter only approaches her and offers to share a taxi! Liam’s on the case immediately, has words with Peter, who runs off and is crushed by a lorry. Exit Peter.

Somehow, Liam has a gun. Clever, that. When I tried to smuggle a sealed jar of ginger jam into France last month, Customs had it off me in a trice: it was a gel and therefore a bomb, despite my having bought it in Sainsbury’s the day before. They also nabbed my companion’s unopened tin of Stella. However, guns on flights is different – less of a threat and much harder to spot.

He meets up with an old colleague from ‘The Service’ who tells him it was probably Albanians wot dun it. Ah, of course. Kim’s destined for the sex trade most likely, after they’ve got her hooked on drugs. Dearie me.

Then Liam’s in a car (he has a car now – hurumph. When we tried to pick up a booked hire car in France last month, we queued for three hours). An Albanian translator joins him (they’re so easy to come by in a crisis in Paris) who listens to the recording and luckily speaks English too. There wasn’t much useful information to my ear, but Liam has read between the lines. He asks for an Albanian-English dictionary to help him work out the rest of the phone conversation and ditches the translator.

The next bit’s a little fuzzy; I think the cat wanted feeding or something. Anyway, someone swarthy has given this clue under duress: ‘go to Rue de Paradis’ and Liam charges off there, despite having no map and no idea where it is. He gains entry to the correct building immediately (wow) and gallops up the stairs. He opens door after door. Behind each, is a comatose girl lying on a bed, with her arm out and needle marks in it. The last room contains a girl who looks a bit like Kim. He pulls her hair away from her face. No, it’s not Kim, but what’s that in the corner? Why, Kim’s distinctive jacket! He scoops the girl up and takes her back (where?), killing a few swarthy people on the way.

He hooks her up to a saline drip to bring her round. It was another stroke of luck that he’d remembered to pack the saline drip (and its stand and needles) in the panic of leaving America, and that he got it through Customs and they didn’t think it was a bomb. Of course he could have acquired the saline and equipment in Paris – should be easy enough. Remember he only has four days to retrieve his daughter from the clutches of evildom so doesn’t have time to muck about.

Anyway, when the girl comes round, he asks her where she got the jacket. Can’t remember what she says, but it’s another clue and Liam furrows his brow. Think the girl may die at this point. Whatever, she’s served her purpose.

I’m a bit muddled over the next bit too. There’s a car chase, he screeches all over Paris (like you do in an unfamiliar city), outwitting the natives who know where they’re going, abandons the car, steals another, hotwires it and he’s off again. I remember thinking that we must be two-thirds of the way through at the car chase – it’s a common technique to wake the audience up (learned during a brief sojourn studying film-making). So please stay with it – we’re nearly at the climax.

Time is running out so he visits his old French colleague, whose welcoming wife invites him to dinner. No time for that, and we’re beginning to suspect the frog anyway. Is he all that he seems? Liam shoots the wife in the arm to make the traitor tell him the next bit.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says to the screaming woman who’s just had a gun pulled on her in her own home, ‘it’s only a flesh wound.’

Anyway, he gets the piece of the jigsaw and in a flash he’s at a seedy club where he kills a few more swarthy people (kerpow!) to muscle his way into a back room where girls are being auctioned. Swathed in sexy veils, the girls sway – clearly drugged – as men bid for them. Then, would you believe it, but little Kimmie is led onto the stage, also stumbling and swaying. He puts a gun to a man’s head and instructs, ‘Bid for her.’ The man’s uncooperative so Liam shoots him and bids for her himself. There are now dead bodies everywhere and people are upset. Soon he’s overpowered and jostled into a boiler room; he’s manacled to an overhead pipe but just as a swarthy man tries to strangle him, the pipe gives way! He’s free! Well, he has to get out of the handcuffs, but that’s not a problem.

Oh, I forgot a bit – he’s already tracked down the Albanian who kidnapped his daughter and wished him ‘Good Luck.’ He checks the man’s voice against the tape recording to be on the safe side, then kills him, because ‘I said I would.’

[Ah, I remember now - he's the one who squealed, 'Rue de Paradis' with his dying breath. Knew it was someone under duress. Yes, that's the johnny.]

Anyway, back to the plot. While he’s been unavoidably detained, shooting people in the boiler room, Kim has been hustled off somewhere else. Liam takes a bullet to the leg causing a mild limp, but as he said earlier, 'It's only a flesh wound.' He gets over it in no time. Literally.

He finds out she’s being taken to ‘The Sheikh’. Of course. The Albanian Sheikh. He must get to The Quay, pretty sharpish, as the sheikh is about to sail away in his ocean liner. He knows how to get to the quay too, and naturally there’s only one quay in Paris.

He’s there in a jiffy (another stolen car and with another stolen – and loaded – gun).

The yacht is already sailing, but our hero gets on it anyway. Not sure how.

Oh – forgot another bit – somewhere along the line, he finds the daughter’s friend, dead with needle tracks in her arm. So quickly? Poor thing. So that’s her dealt with. Kim’s jeopardy increases.

Anyhoo, he bursts into the master bedroom on the yacht to see the sheikh embracing his daughter. He shoots the sheikh stone dead. Kim is no longer drugged and swaying but falls into her father’s arms, ‘Oh Daddy, you came for me.’

Liam hugs her. ‘I said I would.’

 Zoom out. Fade.

 Epilogue: Despite the trail of carnage and court cases that must be brewing all over Paris, the pair arrive back promptly in California to be met by ex-wife and stepdad. Ex-wife extremely grateful, awe shining from her eyes. My hero. ‘You brought my baby back.’ Stepdad offers his hand and a lift home. Liam demurs, with, ‘No thanks, I’ll get a cab.’ Daughter skips off with them (sans amie) as Liam looks on wistfully.

 Epi-epilogue: He and daughter knock on Holly Valance’s door. ‘Welcome,’ she says, ‘I understand you want to be a singer? Come on in and let’s hear what you’ve got.’

 THE END.

 Crackin’ romp. Four stars.

* No Albanians were harmed in the writing of this review.