Taken (2008) (2008) poster
2008 · action · thriller · crime

Taken (2008)

Directed by Pierre Morel1h 34m2008
ElsewhereIMDb7.7669kRT60%Metacritic51TMDB7.412k
  • heavy
  • kinetic
  • extreme
Movie DNA

Heavy, breathless, extreme action / thriller, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Bryan Mills, a former government operative, is trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter Kim. After reluctantly agreeing with his ex-wife to let Kim go to Paris on vacation with a friend, his worst nightmare comes true. While on the phone with his daughter shortly after she arrives in Paris, she and her friend are abducted by a gang of human traffickers. Working against the clock, Bryan relies on his extensive training and skills to track down the ruthless gang that abducted her and launch a one-man war to rescue his daughter.

Our read · Taken (2008) (2008) reads as a heavy, breathless, grounded action · thriller · crime entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Fingerprint

The shape of Taken

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a no-nonsense ex-spy unleashing hell to rescue his daughter.

ends triumphantyou’ll be fine aftergrabs you earlygrips by minute 15attention 3/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upchild perilgraphic violencedrug use

Skip it tonightYou dislike brutal one-man revenge or trafficking story themes.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”

Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself