moviefreak

This movie is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

The theme is about one of parents’ worst nightmares: human trafficking. Plus the main character is played by Liam Neeson, my fave actor HO HO HO HO HO… It deserves an 8.5 stars out of 10. There’s NOT a boring second at all in the movie, but remember that it’s rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language.

The Story:

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is a former government agent (more specifically a preventer - someone who prevents bad things from happening). He’s very meticulous and he’s now retired since he wants to make up for the lost time with his daughter. His 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace) now lives with her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) and very rich stepfather Stuart (Xander Berkeley).

Kim wants to go with Amanda (Katie Cassidy) to watch U2’s worldwide tour around Europe, but since she’s under 18 years old, she needs Bryan’s signature. At first Bryan is against it, since after all he’d seen around the world (all the bad people he met at his job), he is worried about the prospect of letting two girls be on a trip together far away from home. But after some thinking, he relents with the condition that Kim is supposed to contact him every day to make sure that he knows she’s okay.

When Kim and Amanda land at the airport in Paris, a cute guy named Peter (Nicolas Giraud) tries to befriend them and they share a cab together. Thus Peter knows where they’re staying. Turns out that Peter is a spotter for an Albanian group of human traffickers. When Kim is on the phone with Bryan in the bathroom, a few guys come inside the apartment and kidnap Amanda. Bryan knows that Kim is going to be taken away, so he tells her to describe the guys on the phone as best as she can while he records the conversation.

And true as prediction, Kim is taken away. Bryan flies to Paris right away in order to find Kim. Will he be able to find her? Of course he will. But still the long journey to find Kim will keep you at the edge of your seat, especially because the Paris police department is after him since he’s created chaos here and there as he tries to find Kim. 

Note:

The theme of the movie is really disturbing in a way, since the girls being kidnapped are young travellers who are then being drugged and sold as prostitutes (as it is cheaper than trying to seduce girls from other countries to work as nannies). And they put the virgins on auctions, can you believe it? It’s so sad to think that it happens in the world. So sad.

This movie is a good reminder that we have to be careful with promises of jobs abroad, because I know that some village girls in Indonesia have been promised to get jobs abroad, but then they are actually sold as prostitutes.