Liam Neeson was "Taken" by the Script of His Latest Movie

Liam Neeson, playing the role of Bryan Mills in the upcoming suspense action-thriller "Taken," tells his daughter, Kim (played by Maggie Grace), in the promotional trailer that he, Mills, used to be a 'preventer' when she calls him a 'spy.' She asks him what he 'prevents,' and he replies, "Bad things from happening."

But in the movie "Taken," Liam Neeson is unable to prevent the kidnapping of his daughter and her friend while they're on a trip to Paris to begin following U2's European Tour. But he knows how to find them. And the next hour and a half of movie finds Neeson leaving a trail of dead, damaged, and destroyed as he seeks his daughter and those who have taken her.

Just watching the movie trailers alone, with Liam Neeson's calmly delivered reassurance to the voice on the cellphone that he would "find you. And I will kill you," the viewer is pulled into the drama and the man's story.

As Liam Neeson told Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," the movie's simple premise is a parent's worst nightmare - the disappearance of a child.

And who wouldn't want to see our hero, Bryan Mills -- Oskar Schindler ("Schindler's List"), Michael Collins ("Michael Collins"), Qui-Gon Jinn ("Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace") - "prevent" these unknown ruffians from ever doing this most callous and devastating act to another parent? It just may become the biggest hit of Liam Neeson's storied career.

Although known for his more quietly heroic roles ("Schindler's List," "Nell," "Star Wars I"), Liam Neeson is no stranger to the action genre. He played the legendary Scot Robert Roy MacGregor in "Rob Roy" with the incomparable Jessica Lange as his wife. He also played alongside Harrison Ford in "K19: The Widowmaker." And there was the inscrutably evil R'as al Ghul in "Batman Begins" with Christian Bale.

But Liam Neeson has a commanding presence. His rich voice demands your attention. That, and his melancholy good looks. It is that overall presence that most likely inspired Steven Spielberg to cast him as Ahraham Lincoln in an upcoming movie being filmed this year.

But what made him take the "Taken" part? He told Gaynor Flynn of Time Out Sydney: "I'm always motivated by script. That's my sole criterion and it's either something that gets under my skin or it doesn't, to be honest. And with this script I just loved the action of it. I loved the fact that I was being asked to do it. I was 54 years of age then and I thought in a few years' time I'm never going to be asked to do this sort of stuff again."

But the attraction was in all the action, Neeson told Gaynor. "But then, even though it's never been a fantasy of mine to play an action hero, one gets a real kick out of shooting real movie baddies and driving like a racing car driver."

"Taken" premiered Friday, January 30.

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"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central Network

Timeoutsydney.com.au