15 ActionThrillers To Watch If You Love The Taken Movies

15 Action-Thrillers To Watch If You Love The Taken Movies

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1 15 Action-Thrillers To Watch If You Love The Taken Movies

If you loved Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise then be sure to also check out these similar action-thrillers to get your violent revenge movie fix.

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Liam Neeson’s turn as Bryan Mills in the 2008 action thriller movie Taken wasn’t a big hit with critics but quickly developed a devout fanbase that made it a sleeper hit and spawned two sequels over the next six years.

For those fans that the franchise has cultivated, that have seen the Taken movies more times than they can count, there are these other action-thriller movies with similar qualities to check out next to satisfy their hunger for brutal revenge stories with respected dramatic actors taking on the role of a violent vigilante.

Updated on March 13th, 2021 by Mark Birrell: Taken is one of those movies where the general popularity of it cannot be understated, even some of the key people involved in making it were surprised by its huge level of success, and, even though star Liam Neeson stepped away from the role of Bryan Mills after the third movie, the Taken TV series kept growth within the fanbase steady. Still, with only three actual movies to indulge in, those fans may quickly be left wanting more of the same action after binging the trilogy. To make sure that no fan goes hungry for thrilling stories with great actors, we’ve added even more examples of similar movies to the Taken franchise so that they never have to.

15 Man on Fire (2004)

Much like Taken, Tony Scott’s Man on Fire received middling to terrible reviews from critics yet went on to be hugely well-received over time by movie fans, often being cited as one of the best revenge thrillers ever made.

Denzel Washington is the former military/CIA one-man army this time around, seeking ruthlessly violent retribution against the gangsters and corrupt cops who kidnapped his bodyguarding charge, played by a young Dakota Fanning.

14 Death Wish (2018)

Eli Roth’s remake of Michael Winner’s original 1970s classic with Charles Bronson is a much more conventional revenge movie and fans of Taken should enjoy latter-day Bruce Willis’ practiced penchant for busting heads.

The basic plot remains the same as Willis plays a man who becomes a murderous vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter left in a coma after a home invasion but the 2018 version amps up the firepower and brutality to fit more with the general image of the franchise rather than just the relatively subdued first installment.

13 Haywire (2011)

Steven Soderbergh directed this stripped-down espionage thriller about an unstoppable black ops soldier who’s backstabbed by her own team and set on a bloody and Bourne-esque path of revenge.

Gina Carano takes the lead role in a very impressive ensemble of main players, squaring off against the likes of Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, and Ewan McGregor, amongst many others, with the director’s eye for realist elements making for a uniquely brutal kind of bare-knuckle action and choreography.

12 The Equalizer (2014)

This movie adaptation of the popular 1980s TV show sees Denzel Washington play a retired black-ops handyman who takes to a form of good samaritan vigilantism that brings him face-to-face with formidable criminals.

Next to Neeson’s turn as Bryan Mills, Washington creates the next biggest elderly action icon of the 2010s, and the methodical kills in both The Equalizer and its sequel should satisfy any Taken fan.

11 From Paris with Love (2010)

The next movie after the original Taken for director Pierre Morel, From Paris with Love is a much more comedic take on Parisian action but no less brutal.

Jonathan Rhys Davies plays a moderately low-level CIA agent who’s paired with John Travolta’s unhinged superspy as the two work to stop a terrorist plot linked to a narcotics ring.

10 Point Blank (2010)

On the opposite side of globally-popular French action cinema, directors like Fred Cavayé have crafted critically lauded thrillers that have, in many instances, gone on to have their own American remakes, as his 2010 movie, Point Blank, received in 2019.

The breathlessly fast-paced story sees a nurse’s aide forced to break a professional criminal out of custody at the hospital that he works in, placing him in the middle of a deadly game involving corrupt cops and coverups.

9 The Man from Nowhere (2010)

This action-heavy crime thriller sees a mysterious loner become the guardian angel of a young girl caught in the grip of ruthless gangsters as he works to singlehandedly bring down their entire organization.

Won Bin’s action hero may not be as old as a veteran actor like Neeson but the precision demolition of his targets is thoroughly old school.

8 Harry Brown (2009)

Michael Caine plays a retired soldier who snaps after the death of an old friend at the hands of some local criminals and exacts a bloody revenge.

Taken fans will enjoy both the unusual turn of a respected dramatic actor to a brutal action movie killer and the character of Harry Brown himself as an often literal blast from the past.

7 3 Days to Kill (2014)

Kevin Costner plays a government killer out to reconnect with his estranged daughter in Paris after a terminal diagnosis leaves him with little time remaining in this slightly lighter take on retro thrillers.

Also co-written by Taken’s co-writer and producer, the prolific Luc Besson, 3 Days to Kill will satisfy a fans’ need for levity while still delivering a ruthlessly efficient hero.

6 Peppermint (2018)

Pierre Morel returns to the vengeful vigilante genre for this story Jennifer Garner’s unstoppable action hero facing off against a cartel mob in Los Angeles.

Garner plays a mild-mannered mother who trains herself to become an uncompromising killing machine after her daughter and husband are gunned down in a drive-by shooting and Taken fans will recognize a number of the director’s hallmarks rebounding in Peppermint.

5 Blood Father (2016)

Mel Gibson plays a recovering alcoholic and ex-con who has to protect his troubled and estranged daughter from the gangsters that she escaped from in this gritty action crime thriller.

Like Taken, Blood Father is a French-produced movie made in the English language and should offer fans another unique perspective on grizzled Western-genre archetypes and their hardboiled rampages against overwhelming odds thanks to its distinct Southwestern setting and Gibson’s convincingly battle-scarred main character.

4 Non-Stop (2014)

Outside of the Taken franchise, Liam Neeson has found great success in modern thrillers with director Jaume Collet-Serra, with whom he’s made four movies so far.

Their second together, 2014’s Non-Stop, finds Neeson’s U.S. Air Marshal forced into figuring out a murder mystery and a terrorist plot onboard a passenger jet that’s flying over the Atlantic, and the claustrophobic setting makes it no less action-packed, hard-nosed, or sprawling than a movie like Taken.

3 The Foreigner (2017)

Jackie Chan is the aging action hero out for stone-cold revenge this time around as he plays a Chinese-British immigrant who unleashes his special forces training onto a rogue group of IRA bombers after his daughter is killed in an attack.

Pierce Brosnan reteams with GoldenEye director Martin Campbell for this emotionally charged political action thriller with Chan turning in a great dramatic performance.

2 Colombiana (2011)

Before directing both of the Taken sequels, Olivier Megaton teamed up with franchise writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen for this action-fueled revenge thriller starring Zoe Saldana as a young woman who has trained for years to take on a powerful drug cartel and avenge the deaths of her parents.

Though Saldana has much more of a history with the contemporary action genre than Nesson did when he starred in the first Taken movie, the team once again transformed their lead beyond their usual image and into someone convincingly deadly in a much grittier and more grounded world kind of world than usual. A feat that would perhaps be perfected with our final entry.

1 John Wick (2014)

After all the career renaissances within the action movie genre that happened after Neeson’s turn in Taken, the one that made the most sense, and has had perhaps the greatest impact, has been Keanu Reeve’s return to the martial-arts-fueled, gun-heavy, setpieces of his days in the highly popular Matrix movies.

The actor struck gold with his former assassin sucked back into an underworld of revenge and endlessly inventive death. John Wick is certainly of a different ilk than Taken when it comes to choreography and stuntwork, but it’s hard to imagine why that would ever count against it.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/action-thrillers-watch-like-liam-neeson-taken-movies/

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