“Taken” is a revenge action-thriller from “Transporter” producer Luc Besson and “District B13” director Pierre Morel, starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace and Olivier Rabourdin.

We all know Liam Neeson, don’t we? And the man can really act, is capable of the kind of nuance that action movies don't usually require, despite the fact that he's not as young as we remember him. Nonetheless, Pierre Morel's "Taken" transforms Neeson, not particularly convincingly, into a real action star. One of the reasons Neeson was attracted to the film was that he hasn’t done this kind of thing before. Biopic roles he’s famous for include Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and Holocaust hero Oskar Schindler, for which he won a Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

So Neeson is Bryan Mills, a retired government agent who must rescue his only daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace of “Lost”), who is kidnapped in Paris on her first trip abroad. It’s a tough road for Bryan, particularly since he has to compete with Kim’s bitter mother (Famke Janssen, in a thankless role) and wealthy stepfather (Xander Berkeley).

Director Pierre Morel, working from a script by Robert Mark Kamen ("The Fifth Element") and Luc Besson, knows when to slow down and lavish time on characters to establish the emotions and motivations that are going to give the action its urgent undercurrent. But that’s just about it. The story isn’t surprising, or original. Just simple; as the creators claim they actually wanted.

For instance, take the main character: Brian, a nice, easygoing fellow whose main mission in life, as the film starts, is to rekindle a relationship with his teenage daughter. Apparently, he was a workaholic who neglected his family and wrecked his marriage, but he's determined to keep that one flickering connection alive and thriving. Come on! Oh, yes, and it turns out that he's a former CIA agent. Of course he is. Hurray! That should save the day.

Unfortunately there’s more. What follows is a bone-crunching, bullet-riddled journey where Bryan uses his martial arts prowess, intelligence gathering skills, and outright torture to find his daughter, leaving a wake of destruction behind him as he runs afoul of both old allies in French intelligence and the Parisian underworld.

In his career's recent years, Neeson has very often taken roles in which he is a mentor/trainer/father figure to a younger man, as in, for example, “Batman Begins” (2005), “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005), “Gangs of New York” (2002), and “Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace” (1999). His character often must die early in the movie and/or the student's life so that the young man can apply the Neeson character's lessons to his own ongoing struggle. However “Taken” is not this tragic. It can become the ideal wasting time method, or an easygoing film to watch if you really love movies.