Greg Probert

Taken
Taken is a 2008 French action thriller film starring Liam Neeson, Famke

Janssen, and Maggie Grace. It is based on a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark

Kamen and was directed by Pierre Morel. Neeson plays a former CIA operative who

sets about tracking down his teenage daughter after she is kidnapped by slave

traders while traveling in Europe.

This film does a great job of using a mix of all shots with quick cuts to keep

the audience on the edge of their seats and hungry for more action. All

throughout the film there are tons of vertical lines that help to both mold the

shots into a fluid moving film and suggest action and well as dynamic movement. It

also proves to show that Liam Neeson has the power to overcome obstacles, in

finding his daughter as well as the kidnappers who have taken his daughter into the

human slave market. Taken not only uses the lines to focus our attention but also

uses almost all of the focusing attention techniques, mainly with movement and

extreme close-ups. Which gives the viewer a never stopping action film with focus

on main events in the storyline that help the viewer connect with Liam’s character

and understand his internal struggle to find and get back his daughter. Pierre

Morel, the film’s director does a great job of keeping almost all of the images in
motion throughout the movie. Most of the shots in the movie are from a fixed-

frame movement, such as the dinner scene with Liam’s character and the French

police officer in which case the camera stays in one position and the actors are

moving about the frame with fluid movements, as if the viewer is looking in through

a window.

“Color holds a powerful position among the elements of film structure,” says,

Lewis Jacobs, a film critic, when asked about his views on color. In this film

saturated tones, white and black, are used to express the deep trouble faced by

Liam in search of his daughter all throughout France. The use of dark colors helps

to darken the mood of the film and even the shots during the day are full of dark

colors and deep shades to help keep the focus on the father who tirelessly

searches for his daughter. It isn’t until the end of the film when he is reunited

with his daughter that the viewer once again sees intense whites and brighter

colors on the actors which was present in the beginning of the film as well. When

Brian saves his daughter from the head kidnapper she is wearing full white which

helps the viewer realize that she is true and innocent while her father wears a

darker black tone, allowing us to contrast between the two. All of the Albanians in

this film wear dark colors and dark tones so we can parallel them to Liam’s

character, grouping them both under hostile and dangerous.

 Pierre Morel does a good job of using setting and location to enhance the

movie as a whole. The setting of the movie was perfect and helps to connect the

struggle of the father with many parents who fear for their child’s protection

when they cannot be watching over them such as on trips and vacations. The

location of Paris as the story’s main location was a great choice for the Irish actor

Liam Neeson who seems at home among the streets of Paris recalling facts and

experiences he learned from his days in the CIA. Location shooting for the movie

also helped me to feel like the movie and places were authentic because seeing the

Eiffel Tower in the background helps to validate that he knows what he’s doing and

has the experience that he claims he has had in the CIA. The setting also helps to

create an emotional atmosphere, the buildings and slums that most of his searching

takes place in helped me to connect more with his struggle and accept that his

daughter might be lost in the filth of human prostitution and slave trafficking.

Liam Neeson helps to make the film a better movie by his great acting and

his ability to connect with the audience and convey his emotions very easily using

facial and vocal expressions. The other cast which includes countless kidnappers

and pimps as well as the high society ringleaders and slave purchasers were also

cast well. The clothes that all actors wore helped to make their parts in the movie

helpful and Liam’s trench coat that he is sporting for most of the movie helped me
visualize him as a detective searching for his daughter. The music and props of the

movie also helped me to connect on more of action fan level by offering not only

life size and realistic guns, cars and knives but realistic fight scenes and

techniques that one can really only obtain from government training. The

background music for the movie helped to keep me adrenaline filled for action and

sad for the more depressing parts of the film.

Editing is an important stylistic element because it affects the overall

rhythm or pace of the film. The fast paced editing and close ups helped me to stay

focused on Liam’s character and the action in the film. Most of the fight scenes

are either fast cut/fast paced scenes or just fast pans. The car scene at the end

when he is chasing the boat by driving in a car on the side of a river is one of my

favorite parts of the movie due to the fast cuts that help to keep the action

suspenseful and helped to keep me focused on the position of the car and the boat

in the river. The average shot in the movie is very short which makes the movie a

fast paced film. The director picked the appropriate actor and scene composition

for a face paced film and has enticed my senses into wanting to see the sequel that

he says is already in production. There are many ways of effecting transition, some

more evident than others. Editing is an effective transition. As in most films

released today the film editor has done his job by placing the pieces together into
a coherent whole. The editor builds coherence, continuity and rhythm. He uses

cuts as the only means of transitions, faster cuts appearing near or during action

scenes and slower ones to help keep attention on details. The editor also uses

inside/out editing in the film multiple times one of which when Liam’s character is

calling his ex-wife to let her know their daughter is missing. In the scene it cuts to

a dimly lit room where his ex-wife is asleep which the viewer assumes is her room.

Then you hear a phone ring and she answers the phone shortly after turning on the

light. Another good example of this type of editing is present when Liam’s

character first enters the apartment where his daughter was taken; he has a

flashback which starts out in a blurry close-up, slowly zooming out as the action

progresses. We learn as the scene unfolds that this blurry close up is the fight

between his daughter and her kidnapper. A good transition using outside/in editing

is when the two teenagers first arrive at the apartment where they will be

spending their vacation the viewer starts by not knowing the space and by the end

of the scene know most of the inside details. Another good inside/out editing

example is when Liam’s character first meets up with Jean-Claude we just have a

shot of them both walking next to each other not saying anything. It isn’t until

they stop at a crosswalk that we find out who Jean-Claude’s character is. As it

turns out he is the director of internal affairs for the French government and has
moved up since last he spoke to Liam’s character. Although there is a compression

of time in this film as in most recent films the editor does a good job using flash

cuts for almost all action scenes. One good example is when Brian (Liam) is clearing

out a brothel looking for his daughter flash cuts help to keep the action going

without the viewer feeling overwhelmed by the action. This is not the only scene in

which this cut is used another good example can be seen when Brian goes into the

building with the “red door” which he discovered was where the guys who took his

daughter live. As you can assume he kills everyone in the building and the cuts for

this action is short machine-gun bursts of images sandwiched together. In the

beginning of the action in this movie the editor does a good job of using parallel

cuts for when Brian is talking to his daughter as she is being taken. She is in a

bathroom in her apartment in Paris and he is in his apartment in the US yet the

action seems to take place at the same time. The end scene where he steals the

car and drives alongside the river to catch the boat sailing away is another great

example of parallel cuts. Since they never show the car and the boat in the same

frame we cannot really tell for sure how far away he is from catching it and the

cuts make us hope that he can catch the boat which seems to be getting away. A

good example of freeze frame in the film is at the very end when he opens the

door to the head kidnapper’s bedroom and the head kidnapper is standing there
with a knife to his daughter’s throat. Brian fixes his pistol on the kidnappers head

and all is still, they stand there not saying anything for about ten seconds then the

kidnapper opens his mouth to say something and Brian shoots him in the head.

Sound in films today is often times taken for granted. Just a few short

decades ago we did not even have sound available in films. Today however we are in

an age where we can take having sound for granted and often times aren’t aware of

how or why we hear what we do. One must first understand the difference

between visible and invisible sounds. Visible sound is a sound that would naturally

and realistically emanate from the images on the screen; such as when Brian talks.

Invisible sound is when sounds emanate from a source not on screen; such as when

Brian runs a red light and you hear other cars slamming on their breaks and laying

on the horn. Most of the film is shot with a subjective point of view allowing us to

hear/see everything that Liam’s character does. An example of an establishing

shot is when Brian pays a translator to sit in a car when he goes and talks to a

prostitute. The pimp comes over and roughs Brian up but he also plants a bug on

his lapel. This scene is a good example of an establishing shot because it starts

off with a view of the street and the prostitutes lined up on the corner, most of

the sound coming from the prostitutes but with mingled street noises. In one of

the ending fight scenes where he is on the boat and is working his way to where his
daughter is being held he fights a guy with a combat knife. The sound effect of

the guy pulling out the knife and thrusting it around is louder than it would be in

reality allowing the viewer to realize the knife and be aware of the new weapon.

Being a movie and not using real guns the gun sound effect are very realistic. Sound

links are very big in this movie, cell phones are used throughout the movie and the

sound links help the viewer to cross bridges between scenes and sequences. The

movie starts off in a flashback which is made aware by the graining look of a home

movie. Other flashbacks in the movie include when Brian visits the apartment his

daughter was kidnapped from he has flashbacks of action that occurred while he

wasn’t there but was able to piece together by what he heard on the phone.

This movie portrayed a very realistic account of what happens to girls who

are innocently caught up in the sex slave trade. It could happen to anyone including

young boys. What the movie did not portray was what happens to these girls after

they have passed their “expiration” date, if they have not succumbed to drug

overdose. Although for the United States audience that it was supposed to impact

I think that it was a good choice of story and plotline for adults who think that

they are being over protective because they can rest assured they are only doing

what’s good for their children.