Liam Neeson, who's sort of an unassuming type in real life, stars as an ex-CIA badass who reluctantly allows his teenage daughter to go to Paris on a lark. She promptly gets abducted by some super sleazy Albanians who kidnap young girls and sell them into the sex-slave trade (and I thought most Albanians were sheep herders--what do I know?)
The daughter (Maggie Grace) is seventeen, but acts more like she's thirteen--just to get the point across to us that she's REALLY innocent.
Dad springs into action and becomes a one man wrecking crew, letting no one get in his way as he punches, kicks, karate chops, and shoots his way through a whole crapload of slimeballs in a feverish crusade to get his little darling back before her virtue is compromised.
It's all way over the top, almost to the point of being cartoonish--and the level of violence here should have earned this PG-13 film an R rating; however, our tolerance for that sort of thing is high. But take any genteel sort of flick, add a few images of the unclothed human body, and you've got an automatic R rating--which just goes to show how twisted our national sensitivities still are.
Having said all that, it's hard to resist rooting for "Super Dad," and this film is a non-stop adrenalin ride with lots of wild smash 'em up car chases, if that's your kind of thing. At the end of the movie I felt like a real badass myself, so I stuck my foot out and tripped an old guy who was shuffling toward the restroom with his walker.
GRADE: C +
