Disney+ Is Streaming The Action Thriller That Changed Liam Neeson's Career

Pierre Morel's 2008 film "Taken" — which is now streaming on Disney+ — was truly an outlier of an action B-movie, yet it actually made it to our list of the 110 best action movies of all time. Arriving practically out of nowhere from a French director who only had a single feature ("District B13") to his name at the time, "Taken" both revitalized the overpopulated yet lukewarm action genre and opened a new path for a 55-year-old Liam Neeson as a formidable, if unexpected, action hero. 

Of course, his work in other films like "Batman Begins" and "Seraphim Falls" suggested that the actor could more than handle such masculine, forbidding roles. But no one really expected him to lean fully into an action-dominated high-concept film like "Taken" and run with it. Although far from a critical darling (as its 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes shows), the movie clearly struck a chord with audiences hungry for lean and mean escapist cinema. Against its $25 million budget, "Taken" took both domestic and international box office by storm, amassing a whopping $226 million worldwide (more than half of which came from the U.S. and Canada alone). 

There was no denying that the bare-bones yet highly effective formula — Neeson eliminating bad guys with a particular set of martial skills while spewing badass one-liners — worked like a charm. With "Taken," the era of Neeson actioners began, and is still going strong years later.

Despite dozens of similar Liam Neeson-led crime flicks that followed it, nothing could replicate the simplicity of "Taken." Bryan Mills (Neeson), a divorced dad and retired CIA officer, tries to make up for the years he spent on dangerous missions instead of caring for his family. His entire world now is Kim (Maggie Grace), his 17-year-old daughter, whom he tries to make as happy as possible. Mills reluctantly agrees to let Kim go on a weekend vacation in Paris with her best friend, but it's not long until she gets kidnapped by an Albanian sex trafficking ring. After a succinct and now iconic phone conversation with one of them, Mills turns his alpha mode on and goes to France to hunt them all down and retrieve his kid.

The premise of "Taken" is as standard as they come. There are no unexpected twists or surprises, except for the film's uncompromisingly ruthless approach. Mills is operating on a vicious vendetta, putting his CIA training to good use, and he has no moral quandaries about killing every single slimeball that gets in his way. Whether they help him get closer to finding his daughter doesn't absolve them from their sins. This mercilessness lends a refreshing quality to Neeson's commanding charisma.

Combined with the film's gritty, raw, and ugly realism — which Morel delivers through desolate locations, menacing criminals, and grand corruption — the result is a high-octane and deeply satisfying action film that rarely takes its foot off the pedal, even if some of the directorial choices (like the overuse of rapid cuts) occasionally cheapen the overall quality of the picture.

Given its astonishing success, it's hardly a surprise that "Taken" was followed by two sequels. Both 2012's "Taken 2" and 2014's "Taken 3" were incredibly lucrative at the box office, multiplying their relatively moderate budgets, largely thanks to Liam Neeson's appeal. But despite their commercial success, neither could even remotely maintain what made the first film so exceptionally riveting. The quality dropped significantly — which isn't shocking, given that director Pierre Morel didn't return to helm those — making it palpable how shameless a cash grab both movies really were.

Regardless, Neeson enjoyed this newly-found action star status and the physically challenging work that went into it. As he said in an interview (via The Guardian), he found these types of roles "very flattering" at his age, although he added that there was a limit on how much and how long he could keep doing these features for. But that was 10 years ago already, and he hasn't stopped yet. Besides starring in the low-key hilarious "The Naked Gun" reboot last year, he also headlined "Ice Road: Vengeance," just the tip of the iceberg in the long line of low and mid-budget action thrillers Neeson's done. Since "Taken" took off, he's made over a dozen of them — such as "Non-Stop," "The Commuter," and "Memory," just to mention a few — in the past two decades with mixed results.

Apparently, he's yet to reach his limit. And looking at the roster of his upcoming movies in 2026 (like "Run All Night 2" and "Hotel Tehran"), it seems like he's not thinking about ending these butt-kicking roles anytime soon.