“I have… a very particular set of skills…”
We fully acknowledge that this post has nothing to do with classic rock. But you knew that already and we want to thank you, dear reader, for coming to this page with the expectation that you would get to watch Liam Neeson’s phone speech from the original Taken in 2009. And we’re not going to disappoint you.
In fact, we’re going to offer it two ways: as our Classic Video (below) and with the full script, so you can read it just as Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills, delivered it.
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”
Wow! One minute of pure genius. Previous generations may have had their Oliviers, their Grants and their Gables. Neeson is ours and he was obviously born to play these kinds of scenes. The actor was born in Northern Ireland on June 7, 1952.
Taken is actually a French production and premiered in France 11 months prior to the Jan. 30, 2009 U.S. release. With a budget of $25 million, the film was an enormous success, earning $226 million worldwide. No surprise that it spawned a sequel, 2012’s Taken 2 (which took in an astonishing $376 million) and another, 2014’s Taken 3 ($326 million), as well as a TV series.
By the way, the five Best Actor nominees for 2009 were Jeff Bridges (who won for his role in Crazy Heart… yeah, we never heard of it either), George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman and Jeremy Renner. In an odd twist, Bridges was first cast to play the lead in Taken but ultimately declined the project.
While we’re on the subject of Taken, how is it possible that the best and worst actors can be cast in the same movie? Neeson is obviously the former; Maggie Grace is without a doubt the latter. If you haven’t seen the compilation of her Taken running scenes, you’re in for a treat.
The various Taken movies are available to stream or purchase here.
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4 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationI Love Maggie Grace. Please be kind.
me too. why is he dis’ing a young lady? It was a great movie. She made me feel like she needed protecting.
I agree with the previous comments. The running style was intentional. To make her appear she was still just a kid. Not so easy to do when you’re acting. Tom Hanks comes to mind when he runs across the NYC street in the movie Big.
I’d never thought about “the running scenes”, though now that they’re here and I see them sequenced, yeah, they seem a bit much and a bit goofy. Perhaps they WERE trying to make her more childlike, even though we SEE about how old she is. And she seems to be running more like a girl about half her age.