Taken (film)
Directed by Pierre MorelPlot
Highly-skilled CIA officer Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has retired in an effort to build a closer relationship with his teenage daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). His frequent absences made him a distant father and led to his divorce. Knowing Kim wants to be a singer, Bryan buys her an expensive karaoke machine for her 17th birthday — which she is pleased with — however Kim's wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley), surprises her with a horse. Later, Bryan's former colleague, Sam (Leland Orser), hires him to help provide concert security for a pop singer, Sheerah (Holly Valance). While backstage before the concert, Bryan voices Kim's interest in becoming a singer, to which Sheerah offhandedly replies, "Tell her to pick another career". After the concert, a mob of fans rush through an open gate and security holds them while Bryan escorts Sheerah to the SUV transport. When Bryan saves her from a knife-wielding attacker, Sheerah gratefully offers to help with Kim's musical aspirations if she has talent..
The next day, Bryan's ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), and Kim set up a lunch in order to attempt to persuade Bryan to allow Kim to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy), claiming that it is to visit museums. Bryan is reluctant to let her travel, as he believes she is too young and naive to be traveling around Paris with only a 19-year old for company. After Lenore implores him further, he eventually agrees on the condition that Kim follow a strict set of rules and conditions he has set her. To his dismay, he discovers that the girls had actually intended to follow U2's European Vertigo Tour around Europe, which enrages him.
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Shortly after arriving in Paris, Kim and Amanda meet Peter (Nicolas Giraud), a charming young Parisian stranger who suggests sharing a taxi from the airport. Peter learns that they are staying alone in Amanda's cousins' apartment and invites them to a party later that evening. After they part, Peter phones someone and passes along information about the girls. Kim, not knowing that she and Amanda would be alone in the apartment, inquires as to where the cousins are. Amanda says the cousins are on vacation in Spain and giddily announces her plans to have sex with Peter.
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Later, after discovering the girls' flight has already landed, Bryan calls Kim, but her phone is in her purse and the call is missed. However, she soon calls him back while seeking silence in the apartment's toilet. While on the phone with Bryan, Kim sees some men enter the apartment and abduct Amanda and reveals that they shared the taxi with Peter. Bryan starts recording the call, and instructs Kim to hide under the bed and to shout out information about the kidnappers when they come for her. She yells out the description of the men as she is taken. Afterward, Bryan realizes that someone has picked up the phone and is listening, and tells him that he doesn't have ransom money, but that he possesses skills that make him a formidable enemy and that if they let his daughter go, he will drop the matter, but if not, he will look for them, find them, and kill them. The listener replies, "Good luck." and destroys the phone.
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Bryan sends the recording to Sam to have it analyzed; he determines that the abductors are likely part of the Albanian Mafia, which specializes in sex slavery by kidnapping young female tourists. Sam says that man Bryan spoke to is Marko who is a mobster boss. He tells Bryan and Lenore that they have a rescue window of 96 hours (four days), if in which if Kim is not rescued, she will most assuredly disappear forever. Utilizing Stuart's connections with a plane company named NetJet, Bryan flies to Paris that very evening. Upon arrival, he heads to the apartment, where he finds the place ransacked. He then finds his first clue: a photograph of Peter on the memory card of Kim's smashed cellphone. He finds Peter as he is charming another victim, a young Swedish girl outside the airport. Bryan attempts to interrogate Peter about the whereabouts of Kim, but he escapes. After a short chase, Peter is struck and killed by a truck on the highway after jumping from the overpass.
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Bryan then seeks help from an old friend, Jean-Claude (Olivier Rabourdin), previously a field agent with French Intelligence, but now working a desk job. Jean-Claude tells Bryan that the Albanian Mafia has been moving into Paris in large numbers over the years. He then tells Bryan where to start looking, but warns him not to make a mess. After meeting up with an interpreter who gives him an Albanian-English dictionary and talking to a prostitute which alerts an Albanian pimp on whom he plants a listener, the trail leads to a construction site with a makeshift brothel. Posing as a customer, Bryan notices a semi-conscious prostitute who has his daughter's jacket. He rescues her, killing several gangsters including the pimp whom he planted a listening device earlier in the process. He checks in at an inn named Hotel Camelia whom the owner is a friend of his. There he uses an IV to help her recover from her abuse.
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Jean-Claude demands a meeting with Bryan out in the open by the river. When Jean-Claude arrives, his cell phone rings. It is Bryan saying he doesn't trust meeting Jean-Claude (until he gets Kim back). Jean-Claude says his boss hit the roof over the construction site violence. While the boss wanted Bryan arrested, Jean-Claude has convinced him to authorize instead a ticket to send Bryan back to America, for previous services aiding the French government, which Bryan refuses. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude's men have been triangulating the source of Bryan's phone call and a squad of men burst onto a nearby rooftop. There they find a cell phone rigged with a walkie talkie. Bryan is actually on the roof of the nearby Notre Dame de Paris and later flees.
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Back in the inn, the girl regains consciousness and tells Bryan the address of the house where she met Kim and got the coat. Bryan bluffs his way in using Jean-Claude's business card, pretending to be a corrupt policeman looking for a bribe. He identifies Marko Hoxha as the one he spoke to on the phone, takes him prisoner and kills the other gangsters. Searching the house, he finds many dead girls in each room. One of them is Amanda, who was killed apparently from an overdosage of heroin.
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Using a makeshift electric chair in the basement, Bryan hooks Marko to electric wires and tortures him with electric shocks for not answering a question. Marko reveals that, because Kim is a highly valuable virgin, she was sold to a slave dealer named Patrice Saint-Clair (Gérard Watkins). Bryan then returns to the lightswitch, flips it on and leaves Marko screaming in agony.
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Needing more information, Bryan goes to Jean-Claude's home. Jean-Claude admits to accepting bribes to look the other way and tries to force Bryan at gunpoint to give up his search. However, Bryan, who arrived at the home ahead of Jean-Claude, has taken the bullets out of the gun. He then draws his own and shoots Jean-Claude's wife in the arm to pressure Jean-Claude into giving up Saint-Clair's address. Bryan impersonates a police commissioner to enter an exclusive party at Saint-Clair's mansion, and locates a secret sex-slave auction in the basement. He sees scantily clad females being auctioned, with Kim as the last offering. Bryan forces a buyer to purchase her, but he is knocked unconscious before he can get to her. He awakens handcuffed to a pipe. After learning Bryan's motive, Saint-Clair orders him killed and leaves. Bryan frees himself, kills Saint-Clair's henchmen, and forces Saint-Clair to divulge Kim's whereabouts. Saint Clair says she will be brought to a yacht in a pier, and Bryan kills him.
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Bryan sees Kim being forced onto a yacht, and pursues it along the Seine. He jumps aboard and eliminates the guards. After a vicious hand-to-hand fight with the buyer (now revealed to be the boss' assistant) he had intimidated earlier, he enters the master bedroom, where he finds an overweight Arab named Mohammed holding a knife to Kim's neck. Mohammed tries to open a negotiation, but Bryan shoots him in the head.
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Reunited with his daughter, Bryan simply tells Kim that he said he would come for her.
After Kim is reunited with Lenore and Stuart back in Los Angeles, the film concludes with Bryan surprising Kim with a visit to Sheerah's house to help her launch a singing career.
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