Taken: The Search for Sophie Parker (2013)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Absolutely Fantastic

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Is this rubbish really based on a true story? Only if one redefines the words based and true. It is part fantasy - the type in which the women do the business - and part propaganda document. Does sex trafficking even exist? Sure it does, but rather than girls being kidnapped off the street and sold into slavery it consists overwhelmingly of women prostituting themselves. True, this sort of thing can get really sordid, especially when some of those involved are of a tender age, but let's not kid ourselves, there are not millions of women sold into slavery every year - this is the new narrative, one spun by the same sordid feminist mafia that tried to convince us that porn is rape.So what does "Taken..." have to offer? Well, if you like seeing women outfighting, outkicking and outkilling men, all power to your elbow. It remains to be seen what it does for East-West relations in a post-Glastnost age, but if your teenage daughter goes out drinking or clubbing, worry about more mundane things, like someone stealing her mobile phone.

****SPOILERS*** Suposidely based on a true story? this Lifetime version of the movie or movies-there's already three of them and possibly more to follow-"Taken" has pistol packing gun toting momma Stevie Parker, Julie Benz, and her all in leathered, when she off duty as a CIA bodyguard, Nadia,Amy Bialey,take on the entire Russian Mafia who kidnapped her sweet but clueless 17 year old daughter Sophia,Naomi Battrick, and her friend the boy hungry Janie Hillman, Jamma Dallender, to be sold into a lifetime of slavery to an international pedophile ring. The two girls were tricked into sneaking out of the safety of the US Embassy who Jamma's dad-Alastair MacKenzie- is the US Ambassador to the Russian Republic by the cute and cuddly Russian party boy Bobby, Matvey Borushko, to join the party at a nearby Moscow bar-disco. It's there where they were drugged kidnapped and later to be sold into sexual slavery by the Russian Mafia.Back in NYC tough undercover policewoman Stevie Parker in finding out her daughter Sophie together with Jenie's lives as well as honor are in danger shoots off to Moscow on the first plane out of JFK Airport determined to rescue them with or without the Moscow PD as well as Russian Government's help. It doesn't take long for Stevie to figure out that some, not all, members of the Moscow PD are working with the Russian Mafia in this slave dealing business. Getting in touch with the girls CIA bodyguard Nadia Stevie goes all out to rescue the girls with the threat of being, for sticking their noses where they don't belong, thrown out of the country or even arrested.***SPOILERS*** It turns out the head of this white slavery ring is Chechnian mobster Sergei Aka Mr. Red, Velislav Pavlov, who's a dead ringer for the now speaker of the house Rep. Paul Ryan; Can they be one and the same persons? It's Mr. Red who's working out the the swank Moscow Kempinski Hotel where he sells off the girls to the highest bidders there from the world of finance entertainment and political corruption. Stevie ends up torturing the truth out of corrupt Moscow cop Makhail, Andrew Bayron, and leaving him with a fully loaded gun, that he somehow doesn't use on her, to blow his brains out before the Russian Mafia does it. Stevie & Nadia are then off to the races in saving Sophie, Janie was rescued earlier in the movie, and smash and put an end to Mr. Red's white slavery operation. Wild and unbelievable final that outdoes any of the "Taken" movies that has to be seen to be believed with Stevie & Nadia out shooting out fighting as well as out smarting the entire Russian mob without as much as getting their fingernails clipped or hair mussed up: But still as entertaining as hell that keeps you from tiring off the movie just to see how ridicules it is and can get.P.S Filmed in Bulgaria that substituted for Moscow Russia showed just how smart the Russian Government under Vladimir Putin was in preventing the movie from being filmed there. It would have made the Russian Government as well as Putin the laughing stock of the whole world in seeing just how insane they were in how the film depicted them!

If you are in any way familiar with the movie "Taken," you will find the similarities between it and this movie to be either insulting or laughable. They didn't even have the decency to come up with a unique title; they just stuck a colon on Taken and added something.To get the gist of this movie, just take "Taken," move it to Moscow from Paris, change Liam Neeson to Julie Benz. There is almost an exact copying of characters from Taken to this bit of cinematic effluent; Peter/Bobby, Sam/and the hairy Russian hacker whose name escapes me, etc. The big difference is that it takes two women to equal one Liam Neeson. For bonus face-palming, the heroine Stevie Parker/50% Bryan Casey even manages to rip off Jason Bourne in "The Bourne Supremacy" when she clandestinely pairs her cell phone with one of the slavers phone in a nightclub.The only thing to review about this movie, and the only way I managed to get through it without self-mutilating, was watch for things and even lines stolen from "Taken". There's nothing new or original here; it's just insulting. If there were a zero rating, I would give it that. As it is, it gets a one-star bonus for making me laugh (even if it was in derision).

Entertaining female version of Taken set in Moscow. It's fun for fans to see the differences and similarities. Julie Benz is quite a likable police officer. Her daughter visits Moscow with her friend who is the daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. They go to a night club and get kidnapped for sex slavery.Of course the high heels and long hair during chases are a little unrealistic but who cares. The Ambassador looks and behaves more like support staff. And it's not as exciting or well written as a big budget movie but for a lifetime movie it is better than expected. Nice team work at play - it's not so unrealistic that she could do it all herself.Worth a watch especially if you are a fan of the Taken formula.