Taken
Retired CIA field operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) attempts to build a closer relationship with his shy daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), who lives with her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley). While overseeing and helping provide security at a concert for pop star Sheerah (Holly Valance), Bryan saves her from an armed attacker. Out of gratitude, Sheerah offers to have Kim assessed as a singer. Before Bryan can tell Kim, she asks her father for permission to travel to Paris with her best friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy). He initially refuses, but eventually agrees after Lenore pressures him. At the airport, he learns the girls are actually planning to follow the band U2 during their European tour.
Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Kim and Amanda meet a young man named Peter (Nicolas Giraud), who offers to share a taxi to learn more about them. Kim and Amanda go to Amanda's cousins' apartment, only for Kim to find that the cousins are in Spain. While Kim makes a call to her father, she witnesses Amanda being abducted in the living room. Kim follows her father's instructions to hide in a bedroom and listen closely. After she is dragged out from underneath the bed, Kim yells a description of her abductor. Bryan suspects one of the abductors has picked up the phone, so he states that if they release his daughter, he will not go after the kidnappers but warns them that failure will result in a hunt wherein death is an outcome. A man with an Albanian accent only answers "Good luck."
Sam (Leland Orser), an old friend and former colleague of Bryan, deduces the kidnappers are part of an Albanian sex trafficking ring and identifies the man as Marko Hoxha. He reveals that, based on previous history, Kim will disappear for good if not found within 96 hours. Using Stuart's private plane, Bryan flies to Paris, investigates the apartment, and finds Peter's reflection in a picture on Kim's phone. He finds Peter at the airport and tries to capture him. While fleeing, Peter is hit and killed by a truck.
With his only lead dead, Bryan turns to an old contact, French former intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel (Olivier Rabourdin), who now has a desk job at the same agency. Jean-Claude informs him of the local red-light district where the Albanian prostitution ring operates, but warns him not to get involved. However, with the aid of a translator, Bryan trails and infiltrates a makeshift brothel in a construction yard, where he finds a young woman wearing Kim's denim jacket. After a firefight with the mobsters, he takes the girl to a hotel, where he clears the drugs from her system.
The following morning, after Bryan returns from a heated conversation with Jean-Claude, the girl awakens and tells him of a safe house where the Albanians keep abductees. Posing as Pitrel, he enters the house, under the pretense of business renegotiation and police protection costs. Bryan identifies Marko as the man who spoke to him on the phone wherein a violent fight ensues, resulting in the deaths of all the other gangsters in the building minus Marko. A quick search reveals several heavily drugged girls, including a dead Amanda.
Bryan then tortures Marko for information using a makeshift electric chair. Marko explains of the high value of virgins in the black market and how Kim was sold quickly. Once Marko gives the buyer as Patrice Saint-Clair (Gérard Watkins), Bryan leaves him to die in agony from continuous electrocution. Later that evening, Bryan visits the Pitrels for dinner and after discovering Jean-Claude's corruption, he coerces him into providing Saint-Clair's location by wounding his wife in the arm with a gunshot.
Bryan infiltrates a secret sex slave auction beneath Saint-Clair's manor. As soon as Kim comes up for sale, he forces Abil, an Arab bidder, to purchase her. While making his way out, he is knocked out and chained to a pipe, but he manages to escape and eliminate Saint-Clair's henchmen. Bryan shoots Saint-Clair to reveal Kim's whereabouts, wherein the latter reveals of a yacht owned by a sheikh named Raman, before he is killed by more gunshots. Bryan boards Raman's yacht and dispatches his guards as well as Abil, who is revealed to be Raman's underboss. He enters Raman's suite, only to find Raman holding Kim at knife-point. Raman attempts to negotiate, but Bryan shoots him. Kim is reunited with her mother and stepfather. The film ends with Bryan and Kim visiting Sheerah.
insanity, alternate history, murder