Rewatchables Reference

• Five incredible rewatchable scenes: Kimmy gets taken, Bryan talks to the kidnappers on the phone, Bryan takes out the apartment of bad guys, Bryan shows up to Jean-Claude's house for dinner, and the entire ending sequence.
• Shea picks the taking sequence – from Kim hiding under the bed through the phone call. "Every single time, the floor drops out from underneath me."
• Bill picks the Jean-Claude dinner scene – his wife serving chicken while they size each other up, then Bryan shoots her in the arm. "It's a flesh wound." One of the greatest cable scenes of all time.

• Liam Neeson's entire career got retrofitted after Taken – now Bryan Mills is in every movie he did before. "Bryan Mills in Love Actually."
• The phone monologue: "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want... I will find you. And I will kill you." Bill argues it was already 100 out of 100 from day one.
• Jean-Claude as the cautionary tale about getting soft behind a desk and forgetting the weight of a loaded gun. The biggest lesson of the movie.
• The movie knows exactly what it is – simple premise, no main bad guy, just Neeson tearing down the entire Albanian sex trafficking ring.

• The portrayal of every foreigner as a kidnapper, sex trafficker, or murderer – every non-American character is horrible and going to die.
• Two teenage girls in 2008 lying to their parents to follow U2 around Europe. Written by Luc Besson who clearly didn't have a feel for what young people liked – by 2008, U2's target demographic was in their late 50s.
• Lenore's terrible parenting – didn't care about the trip, completely left it in Bryan's hands, didn't go to Paris, married the wrong guy.
• Taken 3 – universally acknowledged as terrible. Bill is a defender of Taken 2 but agrees it's not as exciting as the original because it has a defined main villain.

• Jeff Bridges was originally cast as Bryan Mills but dropped out because he didn't realize how physically demanding the role would be.
• Jeff Bridges could have pulled it off – same element of surprise as Neeson, a serious actor in an action role – but it wouldn't have worked as well.

• Marco – the Albanian kidnapper who said "Good luck" on the phone, which Bryan later uses to identify him.
• Jean-Claude – Bryan's old friend who got soft behind a desk.
• Jean-Claude's wife – the nicest woman in the world who just made Bryan chicken and got shot in the arm for it.
• The sex slavery club manager – "It was only business, it was not personal."
• The Sheik – the stereotypical fat sex-hungry sheik at the end who bought the wrong girl on the wrong day.

Jean-Claude – the actor who plays him is the quintessential That Guy. Nobody knows his real name, but he owns the role. Got soft behind a desk, carries a baguette with no bag, and his wife got shot in the arm.

• Liam Neeson expected the movie to go straight to video. He spent four months in Paris learning karate.
• Famke Janssen's role inspired her to become a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
• Maggie Grace was reportedly trained by running coach Alberto Salazar to learn to run like a younger girl – she clearly runs like a toddler in the movie.
• On the map Bryan holds at the airport, the dissolved Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia can be clearly seen.
• Liam Neeson said American parents thanked him for warning them about France. He always explains the dangers were exaggerated for the film.
• Bryan kills 31 people in the movie.

• Liam Neeson – 100%. Did the impossible, became an action star in his mid-50s. Schindler's List won the Oscar but Taken is his Apex Mountain.
• Maggie Grace – was also on Lost at the same time. Never got better for her after this. She'll forever be "the daughter from Taken."
• Albanian sex traffickers – the best thing that's ever happened to them in movies. Apex Mountain for Albanians.

The sex trafficking club manager – strange performance. Got shot three times, lying on the ground trying to appeal to Bryan with "It was only business." Really going for it in a weird way.

• The fifth-floor apartment in Paris that two 17-year-old girls get to stay in – the nicest apartment ever. Amanda's cousin's place while they're "in Spain."
• The kidnappers left Kim's cell phone behind, which is the only reason Bryan can trace anything.
• Bryan somehow buys electronics in Paris and rigs up a cell phone transmitter to redirect calls on the fly – would take months of planning in reality.
• Can you really recognize a specific Albanian's voice just by having them repeat the words "Good luck"?
• Why didn't they just kill Bryan in the sex club instead of handcuffing him to the ceiling? They told someone to "kill him quietly" and then had a massive shootout.

• Did Kim learn her lesson? She's all-in on trusting Dad in the sequels, so maybe it was worth it – 35 people died but it worked out.
• Do sex slavery auctions with red buttons and champagne curtains really exist? Bill says everything up to the buttons might be real.
• Did Jean-Claude's wife survive? She definitely survived the flesh wound. Hopefully she divorced Jean-Claude.

Liam Neeson – not only wins the movie, he wins action movies and revives the genre. Launched a whole new frontier of 5 o'clockers now being made by Netflix, Amazon, and Apple.