A-Fraud and Taken

My sports radio comrade Mike Polak wrote a sound blog post about the A-Rod steroids situation. Here's a link: http://nysportsbuff.blogspot.com/2009/02/rod-is-idiot.html

In other headlines, the wife and I saw Taken this weekend. Both of us were genuinely impressed. The flick is about a retired spy whose daughter gets taken hostage on a trip to Europe. Naturally, he flies over and hauls ass. On the whole, this doesn't sound impressive, but the execution of the middle-of-the-road idea is very good. The writers didn't overdo it with the script, and unlike some productions that make the hero's imminent escape blatantly obvious (24, I'm looking at you here), the movie has you on the edge of your seat on several occasions.

The script isn't anything special, but in the end, you get a hero you can feel for (you simply DON'T mess with a guy's kid). Nothing's TOO overdone, from an action standpoint, and it's not overly drawn out (which is good; there are only so many ways to kill someone). It's simple, it's effective, and while nothing will really take your breath away, Liam Neeson and company don't make many mistakes. All told, I recommend seeing it in theatres. It's not an Academy Award-winner or anything, but what it does, it does well.

RATING: ***1/4