20 Greatest Revenge Movies Of All-Time

9. Taken

Taken was the movie that set Liam Neeson on the path to a late-career surge of blood-thirsty action movies; it is, of course, a revenge thriller in fairly loose terms, though the idea of vengeance does provide the backbone to this Luc Besson produced flick. After all, Neeson's CIA superman, Bryan Mills, sets out to kill everyone (seriously: everyone) involved with the kidnapping of his teenage daughter.

After a slow build-up, the movie kicks into gear at around the half hour mark, offering up some of the most memorable, violent and kinetic fight scenes in all of action cinema; as Neeson threatens to tear down the Eiffel Tower in order to find his daughter, there is a knowing sense of the irony which cements Taken as a certified B-movie - as the body count soars, its tongue remains firmly in its cheek.

So whilst Taken is, fundamentally, a revenge flick (Mills seeks to maim, brutalise and torture those who dared to kidnap his daughter in spite of his warnings, it is also a picture about the anxieties of being a parent - a sort of cathartic exercise in wish fulfilment for worried dads everywhere.