Watching this latest piece of junk from the factory of the French writer-producer Luc Besson, my mind wandered back to Jon Amiel's 1990 adaptation of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, starring Peter Falk as a roguish hack who inexplicably pads his soap opera scripts with anti-Albanian slurs.

Those pesky Albanians strike back in Taken, where they're running a sex slavery ring in the suburbs of Paris, kidnapping and drugging young female tourists who are then sold off to the highest bidder. Unluckily for them, their latest target Kim (Maggie Grace) proves to be the daughter of a grimly paranoid former US security operative (Liam Neeson) who sets out to rescue his little girl.

The director Pierre Morel handles this corny scenario with little redeeming humour or flair, rushing through the early expository sequences to get to the violence. The blend of soft porn, sadism and sentimentality is more than usually repugnant, and the fantasy of an ultra-protective father is indulged in ways that leave certain questions unanswered.

Perhaps from a French point of view there's something exotic about watching a cross between Rambo and Dick Cheney deal out savage justice to Old Europe - or at least to the Albanians.