Schwarzenegger. Stallone. Van Damme. Gibson. Snipes. Ford. When you make a list of the most popular action heroes of all time, there’s another name that needs to be added to that list – Liam Neeson. Over the last sixteen years, he’s headlined a neverending series of action thrillers that have propelled him to a much higher echelon of fame than he’d ever been on before, with him only ever becoming an action star once he was fifty-six. Ultimately, it was all due to a low-budget, European-financed action flick, which came very close to going direct-to-video and reached theatres in Europe a full year before it opened in North America. That movie is Taken, and we’re going to tell you how it revitalized the career of a man who – at the time – was generally considered a top-tier character actor with limited box office appeal. That’s right – it’s time to find out What the fuck happened to Taken!
The story began in the late nineties when director Luc Besson was riding high off the success of The Fifth Element. Like his previous film, The Professional, the film was a bigger hit internationally than at the domestic box office. In fact, 75% of The Fifth Element’s revenue came from outside North America. Clearly, there was a demand for American-style, slick action films made with the European market in mind. Thus, Luc Besson started funding modestly budgeted action movies through his company, EuropaCorp. Besson, who was intensely prolific as a writer, would churn out the scripts himself (often with a co-writer) and hand off the directing duties, usually to a French director. The formula proved to be a hit with Taxi, a French car chase thriller, giving rise to a series of action movies.
Soon, Besson was able to strike up a deal with 20th Century Fox for a series of action films in English, with lower-tier stars, on modest budgets. Along with his Fifth Element collaborator, Robert Mark Kamen, he made several successful movies, including Kiss of the Dragon, starring Jet Li, and The Transporter, which made Jason Statham an action star. While neither of those movies was a smash in North America, they did well internationally and were major hits on the DVD market.
What made their Jet Li and Jason Statham movies so profitable was that neither man commanded a massive salary at the time, as Li was still breaking into the North American market. At the same time, Statham was virtually unknown outside of his appearances in Guy Ritchie movies. Eager to launch yet another action star, Besson had the idea to make a movie about a retired special forces agent trying to rescue his daughter from human traffickers. Rather than hire someone obvious, like Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson, he conceived of the film as a vehicle for Jeff Bridges, who’d never really done a major action film at the time. When Bridges passed, the idea was floated to go with Liam Neeson.
At the time, Neeson’s career was going well, with him having recently played Ra’s al Ghul in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. But, on his own, he was not known to be a box office draw. While he had dipped his toe into action with Darkman in 1990, throughout the nineties, he established himself as a serious actor, thanks to movies like Schindler’s List, Michael Collins, and Les Miserables. He also played Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He had headlined a few big-budget movies, such as Rob Roy and The Haunting, but they weren’t considered hits. Nevertheless, he had a great career as a serious actor.
When he took on Taken, Neeson figured it was just a job. He fully expected the movie to flop, as no one took him seriously as an action star at the time. Indeed, the budget was relatively low, costing only $25 million. The director, Pierre Morel, had previously helmed an action film for Luc Besson called District 13, which was acclaimed by action fans. One of the reasons Neeson had taken the role was to try and do a more physically demanding part than usual, with him claiming he was happy to get paid to spend four months in France learning karate.
One of the reasons the movie did so well was that Neeson was never considered an action hero, making his casting very much against type. Yet, with his imposing 6 foot 4 height and his previous experience in boxing, it didn’t take much to bring out something in him audiences had never expected from him before. With Neeson taking his training seriously, the film also benefitted from a premise that struck a chord with people. Human trafficking was – and is – a huge concern, particularly to parents sending their children off for the first time on their own for the traditional college European tour. The movie played as wish fulfillment to many, with Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills, an insanely competent ex-special forces agent who uses his “special skills” to save his daughter, played in the film by Maggie Grace.
One of the smartest things about Taken is how well-constructed it is, with it taking a solid chunk of running time before you ever realize that Liam Neeson’s character is more than just a somewhat overprotective father. I still remember watching the movie in theaters on opening weekend and hearing the audience roar with approval during Neeson’s first big action sequence.
But, funny enough, the movie almost never came to theaters in North America. Due to how it was made, Taken opened in Europe in February of 2008, and it took a long time for it ever to get a North American release date. It’s a miracle the movie wasn’t sent to DVD, as torrents of the film were widely shared on file-sharing services at the time. In fact, I worked at a company that did quality control for Blu-rays and DVDs, and I can testify that a DVD release of the film was locked and loaded long before it reached American theaters.
Yet, the trailers for this movie hit a chord, with them brilliantly centered around the now famous scene where Neeson warns the men who have “taken” his daughter that he possesses “certain skills” that make him a nightmare for people like them. Everyone who saw that trailer wanted to find out what those special skills were, but the film wildly exceeded 20th Century Fox’s expectations when they opened it on the notoriously sleepy Super Bowl weekend back in 2009. The film opened with $24.7 million, which just about matched its budget, and became a monster word-of-mouth hit, grossing $145 million in the US, making it EuropaCorp’s biggest box office hit to date. It immediately established Neeson as an action hero, with critics praising his performance, even if they criticized the action sequences. His action stardom was solidified when he appeared in three straight action flicks that made money – Unknown, Taken 2, and Non-Stop. He became the king of thrifty, no-frills action thrillers that could be made for small budgets and prove profitable for studios. In fact, more than a decade and a half later, Neeson is still making them, although he’s about to try to reinvent himself once again by playing the lead in Paramount’s long-planned reboot of The Naked Gun.
So that’s what happened to Taken – basically, a solid and simple premise, coupled with outside-the-box casting, struck gold for all involved. It also established a new trend where audiences seemed to like older action heroes, with many of the biggest names in the genre nowadays, including Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves, all being north of sixty. Several middle-aged actors tried to “do a Neeson” with Kevin Costner making Three Days to Kill and Criminal, and Sean Penn even teaming with Pierre Morel for The Gunman. Still, outside of Bob Odenkirk, no one has come close to striking the public’s fancy like Mr. Neeson.
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