Taken

Once I had a sexy dream (for me) that I sat next to Liam Neeson for a couple of hours and we quietly held hands. This is apparently not an usual fantasy, for I had no trouble digging up a couple of friends to see Taken (the common response: With Liam Neeson? Yes!).

'Twas a fun movie to see, especially with one's gal pals with similar man-crushes. In case you haven't heard, it's about this dad (Liam!) whose daughter is immediately kidnapped by sex-trafficking Albanians (are they new bad guys?) after landing in Paris. Liam, I mean, the dad, is a former FBI-type, gets a call from the daughter in the midst of said kidnapping, and, as if he's been waiting for it all his life, plugs the cellphone into a number of contraptions and tells her exactly what will happen and what to do while it's happening. Then he jets off to Paris and starts punching dudes in the neck.

A lot of the movie is a series of Neeson punching dudes in the neck - so much so that I wondered what it would be like to punch someone in the neck myself, and if they would fall into an immediate coma, just like all of his punched adversaries.

I'm not sure if Neeson is cut out to be an action hero - I prefer him in movies like Love Actually. Taken was frequently compared to the Bourne series, which I don't really see.

Taken was also criticized for its portrayal of the very real problem of human sex trafficking, which is, let's face it, not a very real problem for extremely wealthy young white American women. There's a really funny article on the Onion's AV Club about Gene Shallot's reaction to Taken.

Wanna hear something funny? Looks like Spielberg is making a movie about Abraham Lincoln starring Guess Who?!? Frankly, I don't understand the nation's fascination with Abe Lincoln - I could give two craps about him - but - if Liam's in the movie...