TAKEN (01)

Taken (also titled 96 Hours and The Hostage) is a 2008 French English-language action-thriller film written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, and directed by Pierre Morel. It stars Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Katie Cassidy, Leland Orser, and Holly Valance. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former CIA operative who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter Kim (Grace) and her best friend Amanda (Cassidy) after the two girls are kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while traveling in France during a vacation.

Taken was released in France on 27 February 2008 by EuropaCorp, and later in the United States on 30 January 2009 by 20th Century Fox. The movie grossed more than $226 million. Despite mixed reviews from critics, numerous media outlets cited the film as a turning point in Neeson's career that redefined and transformed him to an action film star. The first film in the Taken franchise, the film was followed by two sequels—Taken 2 and Taken 3—released in 2012 and 2014, respectively. A television series premiered in 2017 on NBC, with Clive Standen portraying a younger Bryan Mills.

DETAILED PLOT

Former Green Beret and CIA officer Bryan Mills attempts to build a closer relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, Kim, who lives with her mother (his ex-wife) Lenore, and her wealthy stepfather, Stuart. While overseeing security at a concert for pop star Sheerah, Bryan saves her from a knife-wielding attacker. Out of gratitude, Sheerah offers to have Kim assessed as a singer, which she first rebuffed when Bryan initially mentioned Kim's ambition. Before Bryan can tell her about the offer, Kim asks him for permission to travel to Paris with her best friend, Amanda. He initially refuses, concerned about her safety, but eventually gives in. At the airport, Bryan learns that Kim lied; the girls are actually planning to follow U2 during their European tour.

Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Kim and Amanda meet Peter, a handsome young stranger who offers to share a taxi. Kim and Amanda go to Amanda's cousins' apartment, where Kim finds out that the cousins are in Spain. After answering a call from Bryan, Kim sees men enter the apartment and abduct Amanda. When she is dragged out from hiding, she yells a description of her abductor, following her father's instructions. Bryan hears someone breathing on the phone and tells the listener that he will not pursue the kidnappers if they release his daughter, but warns them that refusing to accept his offer will result in their deaths. The listener only replies "good luck" and terminates the call.

Sam, an old friend and former colleague of Bryan, deduces that the kidnappers are part of an Albanian sex trafficking ring and identifies the listener as mob boss Marko Hoxha. Based on previous history, Kim must be found within 96 hours or she will likely be lost forever. Bryan flies to Paris, breaks into the apartment, and finds Peter's reflection in a picture on Kim's phone. He finds Peter at the airport, trying to charm a female traveler, and tries to capture him. While fleeing, Peter is run over and killed by an oncoming truck. With his only lead dead, Bryan turns to an old contact, former French intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel, who now has a desk job. Jean-Claude informs him of the local red-light district, where the Albanian prostitution ring operates, but warns him not to get involved. Bryan searches a makeshift brothel in a construction yard and rescues a drugged young woman who has Kim's denim jacket. After a gunfight and high-speed chase with the brothel's operators, Bryan takes the woman to a hotel, where he improvises her detoxification.

The next morning, the woman tells Bryan of a house where she and Kim were kept. Posing as Jean-Claude, Bryan enters the house under the pretense of renegotiating the police protection rate. When he identifies Marko Hoxha by tricking him into saying "good luck," the meeting erupts into a fight which results in the deaths of several gangsters except Marko. Searching the house, Bryan finds several heavily drugged girls and Amanda, who died from a drug overdose. Bryan tortures Marko with electricity, Marko reveals that virgins like Kim have high value in the black market and are quickly sold, before identifying the buyer as crime syndicate leader Patrice Saint-Clair. Bryan leaves Marko to die from continuous electrocution and visits Jean-Claude's apartment that evening. Having discovered Jean-Claude's corruption, Bryan wounds the latter's wife to coerce him into disclosing Saint-Clair's location, before knocking him out.

Bryan infiltrates a covert sex slave auction taking place beneath Saint-Clair's manor, where Kim is the subject of the last sale. Bryan forces Ali, one of the bidders, to purchase her, but is subsequently caught and knocked out. When Saint-Clair learns who he is, he orders his henchmen to kill him, but Bryan breaks loose and kills them all. Saint-Clair reveals that Kim was taken to a yacht owned by a sheikh named Raman before Bryan murders him. Bryan pursues the yacht and eliminates the bodyguards, including Ali, before he finds Raman in his suite, where he is holding Kim at knifepoint. When Raman attempts to negotiate, Bryan kills him with a headshot. Back in the United States, Bryan surprises Kim by taking her to visit Sheerah.

TAKEN 02

Taken 2 is a 2012 English-language French action-thriller film directed by Olivier Megaton and starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Rade Šerbedžija, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, D.B. Sweeney and Luke Grimes. It follows Bryan Mills taking his family to Istanbul, only to be kidnapped, along with his ex-wife, by the father of one of the men he killed while saving his daughter two years prior.

It is the sequel to the 2008 film Taken and the second installment in the Taken trilogy. Released on 3 October 2012 in France by EuropaCorp and 5 October 2012 in the United States by 20th Century Fox, the film grossed over $376 million at the box office, but received mixed reviews from critics. A third film, Taken 3, was released on 9 January 2015.

DETAILED PLOT

At the funeral of his son Marko and associates in Tropojë, Albanian mafia head and freelance terrorist Murad Hoxha vows to seek vengeance on his son's killer. Travelling to Paris with his men, he interrogates and tortures former intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel, whose business card was found at the scene of Marko's death, but finds no information. He then bribes a corrupt police official for Pitrel's files and deduces that Pitrel's old friend, Bryan Mills, was responsible and is vacationing in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, Bryan has just finished his three-day security job for a wealthy Saudi Arabian sheikh in Istanbul and is surprised by his former wife, Lenore, and daughter, Kim, turning up to visit him. While going out for lunch with Lenore the next day, Bryan spots Murad's men following them. He tells Lenore to run and tries to outrun the Albanians, but finally surrenders when they capture Lenore. Realising that Kim is also a target, Bryan calls her at the hotel and tells her to hide, but then is captured and knocked unconscious. She narrowly avoids capture when the kidnappers are forced to flee after they shoot two security guards.

Regaining consciousness, Bryan finds himself zip tied to a pipe over his head in an empty basement. He uses a concealed miniature cellphone hidden in his sock to contact Kim and instructs her to alert the American embassy; instead, she convinces him to let her help. Opening her father's equipment case, Kim takes a grenade and detonates it on a nearby rooftop; the resulting sound allows Bryan to instruct her on triangulating his location.

The mobsters bring in Lenore, make a small incision in her neck, and hang her upside down to bleed out. As soon as they leave, Bryan frees himself and then her. He next has Kim detonate two more grenades and releases some steam through a chimney to guide her to his location. Kim tosses a gun down the chimney, which Bryan uses to kill the guards holding him captive. He rescues Kim, but watches Lenore get recaptured. Stealing a taxi, Bryan and Kim pursue the kidnappers' van, and an SUV, driven by one of the kidnappers' henchmen, arrives to distract them. A chase and shootout ensue, alerting Turkish police, and ends when Bryan manages to lure the SUV into the path of an oncoming train, taking it out.

Leaving Kim at the American embassy, Bryan uses his memory to find Murad's hideout. He rescues Lenore and pursues the surviving mobsters to a bathhouse, where he kills them. Confronting Murad, Bryan offers to let him walk if he agrees to return home and cease his desire for revenge. Murad agrees, and Bryan drops his gun, but Murad tries to kill Bryan, only to find the gun unloaded. Realizing that Murad will never drop his vendetta against him, Bryan kills him by impaling him with a sharp towel hook.

Three weeks later, the Mills family, at a diner back in Los Angeles, has milkshakes to celebrate Kim passing her driving test. They are joined, much to Bryan's surprise, by Kim's boyfriend, Jamie, and she jokingly tells her father not to "shoot this one."