The Film: Although he's starred Schindler's List and The Dark Knight Trilogy, the defining film of Liam Neeson's career has to be Taken. Totally reinventing the Irish actor as an action hero, the movie boasted bloody violence, intense action and a meme-making monologue. The simple plot saw Neeson's Bryan Mills hunting down his daughter's kidnappers, something the disappointing second film switched around, with Mills the one who's taken. For the third film the big twist on the formula is that no one is taken; Mills is hunting down his wife's killer after he's accused of her murder. The Title: Well aside from the whole Taken part of the title being irrelevant this time around, this marks an infuriating return of the trend of slapping a number in the title replacing letters in a move to be edgy. It's been done before to an almost always painful effect; Scre4m was only marginally better than Scr3am (Scree-am?), while at some point in the remake process someone thought mixing things up with Thir13en Ghosts was a good idea. It worked in Se7en, but that's because the number is the title. The first sequel was just called Taken 2, so it's totally out of sync for the series; if we'd already had 2aken or Ta2en it would have been understandable, if not acceptable.
