!Per wiki policy, Headscratchers pages are Administrivia/SpoilersOff. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned!
----
* Bryan tells the kidnappers he will not pay them, instead threatening them (in the iconic speech) with his special skills. This is very badass, but the kidnappers were motivated by money. Why didn't he ask his ex-wife for money from her new rich husband? Also, he fails to save Amanda, whose family is rich (as evidenced by the Paris apartment). Maybe they should have been given the opportunity to barter for their daughters' lives. Does anyone even let them know their daughter is missing?
** As an ex-CIA type, Bryan knows *exactly* how frequently that sort of gambit works. Even if he offered to pay them billions, there was a damn good chance they'd kill his daughter or sell her anyway.
** Also, at the time that Bryan made that speech, he had ''no idea'' who they were. For all he knew, they were enemies of his specifically. He's not on the greatest terms with his ex-wife or her new rich husband, so going to her is probably just not something that crosses his mind when he goes into 'work mode'.
* Bryan makes it perfectly clear that he only cares about the sexual slavery ring to the extent that they have abducted his daughter, and repeatedly offers to leave them in peace if they let her go. Apparently, he's alright with ''other people's daughters'' being abducted, drugged, and raped by sadists.
** It's not at all that he's "alright" with it. It's that his goal is to get his daughter back, and he knows that as badass as he is, he alone isn't going to be able to put an end to the whole thing.
*** Except, you know, he proceeds to do ''exactly that''. He doesn't get all the sellers, customers and whatever other personnel might be involved, but he kills the Albanian suppliers and their ringleader (and many vital {{Mooks}}, too).
*** You think a [[OddlySmallOrganization couple dozen guys]] in one city is the ''entire'' operation? Really?
*** Seemed like a sizeable chunk of it. And considering the attention they'll be getting from the French police...
*** See the FridgeBrilliance entry in the main page. He causes enough damage to get the police's attention, and they are much better at helping the sex slaves instead of just himself.
*** Except for the implications of police incompetence/corruption. Will the sex slaves actually end up any better off?
*** Yeah, most likely. Crooked cops usually do their jobs if the bad guys get exposed (and I don't think that many dead bad guys can go unnoticed), because doing their jobs is the best way to cover-up their prior crookedness.
*** Also keep in mind that Brian wasn't exactly a 'hero' as the term is generally used. He comments early about some of the terrible things that can happen to people overseas, and knows too well about them. He knows he can't save every girl and shut down the entire operation, but has at least a ghost of a chance of saving his daughter. If he kills a few dozen guys along the way, at least that's progress.
** Why should he care? It's established that he's former black ops and that would require a certain amount of moral flexibility. It's quite possible that he really doesn't care about the sexual slavery ring except for where his daughter is concerned. We just happen to be very sympathetic. The movie is all about the lengths he'll go to to save his daughter, not about the lengths he'll go to to stop this crime.
*** To be fair, there's that one scene where he takes one girl from a brothel in (she had a jacket that her daughter was wearing the last time he saw her), and you could tell just by the look on his face as he was cleaning out the drugs from her system that he felt bad for her. I mean, it's not like he doesn't care about other girls being sold on the market, but the important thing was '[[PapaWolf My baby's missing, and I'm kicking ass just to get her back]]'.
*** In a way Brian did save other victims, when he found Marko there were quite a few women around the building, odds are the police found them along with the dead gangsters. Not to mention those men on the boat weren't a bunch of street thugs, they were Albanian Mob bosses. So techincally speaking, Brian crippled their operation by going after his daughter.
** He's not a superhero, he's a man with limited resources outside of his own skillset and on a tight schedule. He's not out to save the world, he's trying to save his daughter. He had to keep his eye on the ball and think practically.
*** Brian was laser-focused on saving Kim. He already knew that Amanda had been taken, and didn't even try to negotiate for her on the phone.
** This troper believes that, given he had a pretty small time-frame in which to rescue his daughter, it was probably more just a case of "well, I'd love to save all these people, but if I stopped to help them all, I'd lose my daughter".
** That one guy at the auction actually explains it quite well "In this business, you have no refunds, no returns, no discounts, no buybacks. All sales are final." They are not kidnapping for ransoms, but to provide a product and fulfill purchase orders. And I guess the types making those purchase orders would not appreciate if the product was sold elsewhere.

* The villains switch from smuggling in and enslaving illegal immigrants to kidnapping several rich white foreigners PER DAY, and from luring their targets to abandoned buildings to nabbing them out of their rooms WHILE THEY ARE ON THE PHONE.
** In regards to switching over to rich white foreigners, this troper's International Perspectives on Women professor (who saw this movie on this troper's recommendation while we were covering sex-trafficking in class) claimed that this [[RealityIsUnrealistic made sense]] because said foreigners are going to have a much healthier pedigree than poorer European women and fetch a higher price from wealthier clients.
*** ''This'' troper wonders just how much of a benefit that really is if the traffickers are then going to enforce their victim's compliance by addicting them to intravenously injected drugs.
*** That was for the ones who weren't considered high-dollar.
*** No it wasn't, remember how the auctioneer referred to her? "As usual, we've saved the best for last", and she was clearly doped up.
*** There are plenty of sedatives that are non-addictive, which is likely what they used to keep the high-price girls docile until the transfer could be made.
*** It could very well have been something as simple as a mouthful of [=NyQuil=] to shut her up. They wouldn't exactly want her bawling her eyes out in front of buyers and it wouldn't spoil the product.
*** That depends on the type of buyer you're pitching to [[NightmareFuel *shudder*]].
** The villains also seem to have poor impulse control: at first their "recruiter" invites the girls to a party their first evening in Paris (which the audience can tell is a trap in the making), but apparently the bad guys decide to just go ahead and grab them that afternoon. So why bother with the fake party invitation at all?
*** Because after he invited them to the Party, they proceed to tell him they are alone, and where they live inside the building. We need a translator, but I guess he then told his peeps: "Hey, let´s just grab em right there, nobody will know." or does so off screen. It could also just have been a thing to keep the "friendly" facade...
*** Wasn't the "We're here by ourselves!" part before the party invitation? In any case, I assumed it was the "recruiter" checking whether or not anyone was expecting to see them that night or not (meaning more time before somebody reports them as missing), or even checking to see how jet lagged they were (they'd be easier to kidnap if they're in bed/asleep).
*** "Where they live inside the building" came after he told them he would be back to pick them up for the party. He needed a reason to come back to get that information whether the slavers went with Plan A or Plan B.
* Was it ever covered exactly ''why'' there was somebody trying to assassinate an early-20's pop singer?
** Well, it happens with a lot of [[FanDumb crazy male fans]] who believe ''"if I can't have her, nobody can"'', as the botched attempt on Japanese singer-and-voice actress Creator/NanaMizuki shows.
** Same reason someone thought it'd be a good idea to shoot Music/JohnLennon, presumably.
* Nothing is ever done to show if Amanda's family was ever notified of their daughter's murder by overdose, or what actions they took if they were.
** Does it matter? The movie was centered on Bryan saving his daughter. He did that, end of story. Amanda was a plot device to get Kim to Paris, and her death was included just to tie up the loose end.
*** If it bothers viewers enough to suspend their disbelief, then yes, it does matter. And they ''didn't'' tie up the loose end, because they didn't bother adding in even a two-second line of dialogue to clarify if her parents were notified or not.
* It's never really made clear how long it took Bryan and Kim to get back to America, considering Bryan's all bandaged up and would have possibly needed to chat with the French authorities about that long list of murder victims he's tallied up.
** The implication is that the entire French legal system in this regard is corrupt. In that scenario it makes more sense for the French to let Bryan leave quietly and quickly, since if he was brought up on charges the whole story had a good chance of coming out, not to mention the diplomatic implications for the US and France at large given Bryan's former occupation.
** I'd like to know how they even got off the ''boat!'' Presumably it had a crew separate from all the mooks. Did Bryan kill them too, or were they OK with just dropping Bryan and Kim off after he'd explained why he'd just murdered their employer and all his bodyguards?
** The crew can maybe bar brawl but do you want to fight with a man who just single handedly murdered almost everyone on board? Lifeboats are also a possibility, they weren't that far from shore if I remember it right.
* Nor have there been any mention of Jean-Claude. Was he arrested or kicked out of the department for his connections to the traffickers? What did his wife think of her husband now that she knew of his connections?
*** Jean-Claude never had any connections to the traffickers; he was aware that his boss was involved, but was only too happy to look the other way.
*** He was happy to look the other way because he was being [[EveryManHasHisPrice paid off]]. That's one hell of a connection.
** Probably Jean-Claude greased the wheels to get it all covered up. And the wife doesn't really get the ''whole'' story from Bryan, he probably talked his way out of it.
*** He appears in the sequel.
* Why has no one thought about that girl with Kim's jacket? Are we supposed to assume she found her own lost half-naked way back home?
** There was a phone in her room, wasn't there? She could just call home.
** It is also implied that the Motel owner was a friend of Brian's. Makes the fact that a middle aged man would be carrying a bruised drugged up half naked girl through the lobby.
* Now, first of all, I am aware that there are a lot of very sick people in the world, but are there really people in the world who pay up to half a million dollars for women who are drugged out of their minds and can't even stand up straight? Not that buying and enslaving people is ever a good thing, but come on! The same goes for the johns on the construction site. Like I said, there might be people who would be sick enough to not care if the prostitute they are having sex with is barely conscious and is obviously being forced into prostitution, but are there enough of them for the Albanians to make a living off of them? To me, these people seemed even sicker than those Albanians.
** You ARE aware these girls were in fact virgins, right? They fetch a much higher price in the sex-slaver market.
** High School biology teacher here. You can't easily tell if human females are virgins. The hymen is just a little ring of skin, and it varies in thickness and width. [[RealLife Real life]] gynecologists have been asked by parents to verify whether their daughter has had sex, all they can say generally is "maybe, maybe not" unless evidence of recent vigorous sexual activity is present. Absence of that and "virginity" are two different things and even if they were virgins, the clients paid big bucks to be her first rapist? I for one am incredulous.
** The ones fetching the half-million dollars weren't the ones drugged out of their minds.
** The daughter could still barely stand on her feet and was in a daze. Besides, I'm sure she had to be sedated somehow before getting in that room in that outfit.
*** I disagree. She could stand well enough, and was lucid as soon as she saw Daddy come in. I think the "daze" wasn't chemically induced, but what happens when a 17-year-old girl is realizing that she's going to spend the rest of her life as some rich sicko's sex slave.
** For Half a million, I'm surprised one couldn't just tempt a consenting virgin for sex. This guy is a millionaire who owns his own yacht; he should be covered in gold digging, trophy virgins. Yet he has to resort to greasy sex traffickers to get sex?
** Arguably no one ''has'' to resort to the sex trafficking trade in order to 'get' sex -- some people presumably just find the power imbalance in such a relationship a turn-on.
** This part was rather strange, if you think about it. For 500.000 dollars, they could easily just kidnap a virgin and cover it up. Chances are, they were just turned on by the thought of 'buying' another human being, or they had so much money that they could just spend twice the money they would actually need for the sake of convenience, especially because, once they bought a girl, it would be nearly impossible for the police to track them down. Kidnapping someone with their own henchmen wouldn't be so easy.
** This is very much [[TruthInTelevision Truth in television]]. Sex trafficking is a huge problem throughout the world (even in the United States) and wealthy individuals like the Sheik are more than willing to pay top dollar to get a particular kind of girl. These men are essentially just rapists with money enough to get someone else to do the dirty work.
** The girls are expensive but the important thing is they're reusable. A girl can be bought, raped and resold countless times. Multiply the number of times a day they get raped by the cost of admission and divide that number by how much she cost you in the first place and that's how many days until she starts turning a profit.
** A recent news item proved that yes, sometimes a person will pay half a million pounds (or 780,000 dollars) for a virgin. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4607686/brazilian-student-sells-virginity.html
** All of this is sort of moot on the basis that the auctioneer was astounded at the $500,000 sum, and TheDragon acting on behalf of the Sheikh didn't want to pay that much either -- it was Bryan who reached over and thumbed the button. In fact, reading probably a little too far into it, the Sheikh would have been ''pissed'' if he had overpaid for a sex slave, and so wanted to have her immediately to verify whether she was worth it... and/or whether the Dragon's head would roll, since there's no way he would have kept it had he spent that much of the Sheikh's money without telling his boss what happened.
* Did anyone else hate the mother? I felt that she was the most unsympathetic person in the whole film. When we first see her, she is going off on Bryan for coming to his daughter's birthday party. Then she goes off on him because he bought a gift for her. That's weird anti-social behavior to treat anyone like that unless they were an AbusiveParent. Bryan obviously wasn't. I never could fathom why she was so rude and hateful towards him. Sure, he was gone a lot but that's not all that bad. I could see it being grounds for divorce but certainly not grounds to be a JerkAss. Besides, it's not like Bryan was just some blue-collar worker who had little to no reason to be gone so often. He was in the CIA. He had his reasons... like y'know, saving the world. If he was a jerk who left the house too often, shouldn't she at least commend him for making the attempt to come back into his daughter's life? Or at the very least, pretend to be civil for the sake of their child and not look like a total CountryMatters? Kim was cool with him, so it's not like there were any emotional scars from him being gone so often. Later, she gets mad because Bryan was showing concern that his 17 year old daughter was flying off to France with no adult supervision. She has her daughter blatantly lie to her own father on top of all that. And worst of all, at no point does she admit that she was wrong or apologize to Bryan for all the shit she was pulling. I mean, it's entirely her fault that her daughter was kidnapped. I would've loved if the movie ended with him roundhouse kicking her in the face.
** This Troper absolutely concurs with you (as, in fact, does the entire "Taken" board on Website/IMDb).
** To this troper, complaints of this nature seem to boil down to "Why is she so mean, doesn't she know that her husband is a goddamn superhero?" There are a lot of folks that take their career down a notch or two once they have a family. Considering we don't have any idea just how absent a father he was, I don't really have a problem with it.
*** It was pretty obvious she still harboured some resentment from the divorce. Until he saved Kim, of course. And it wasn't her fault. She made mistakes, the girls made mistakes, but it was actually the Albanians' "fault".
*** He aborted a mission once just to visit his daughter...he got reassigned to Alaska for that. It´s not like he didn´t want to, it's more like that he would see her LESS if he tried to see her more.
** And then the FridgeLogic sets in: Everything you said above is true, but in the end, ''none of it matters.'' They were kidnapped ''within hours'' of arriving in Paris. Even if they had been telling the truth, and had planned to spend the whole time in Europe visiting museums in Paris, things would have turned out ''exactly the same.'' The only lie that ends up mattering is Amanda's lie that the cousins would be staying with them. The mother knew nothing about ''that'' lie. So, ultimately, their situation is Amanda's fault, not the mother's.
*** There's still some major IdiotBall being tossed around. Bad enough the girls went travelling without an adult chaperone, but put their trust into a total stranger.
*** The mother encouraged her daughter to lie to her father, thus reinforcing an attitude of general disdain for him and his role as a parent. The implication is that had her mother not been on board with the lie and her daughter's trip to Paris, she would have heeded his warnings about the dangers and perhaps even allowed him to come along as he suggested. More importantly, if his role as the father had been given consideration in the decision, then there would have been more of a discussion as opposed to the mother just essentially telling him that his absence forfeited his parental rights.
** You have to remember the film [[RuleOfDrama sets up extreme tropes in order to engage its prime audience]] -- fathers, whether single, married, and separated. The bitchy ex-wife is one of those tropes. The subtext of the film is that the ex-wife is frigging lucky Bryan hasn't decided to get her "focused" with all of her shitty behavior towards him.
** One of the major contributions to the fanbase's hatred towards the mother is her total disregard for her daughter's safety just for the sake of being spiteful to Brian. Kim was a '''recently'''-turned-17 year old who had no experience in travelling anywhere abroad on her own, knew fully well she was taking a tour all over Europe with only one person she knew out of the entire group, made her daughter straight up lie to Brian about the whole thing so he'd be more lenient in signing the papers, didn't even bother to talk to Brian about it first before getting her daughter's hopes up in talking about it all together, calls Brian pathetic for looking out for their daughter's safety considering he has had plenty of experience in the worst parts of the world and knows exactly what kind of scum lurk out there, drives the knife in further by questioning why he couldn't have made it easier by just signing it then and there and in the end doesn't have any concern over not hearing a single word from their daughter when she had just arrived in Paris and criticises Brian because he does. He may be an overprotective father (and a justified one at that) but she makes so many horrible decisions as a parent to a very young daughter that it's like the film was making a damn impressive attempt to make sure the audience hated her.
** No, she didn't do it "just for the sake of being spiteful to Brian," and there's no indication at all in the movie that's the case. The way she was acting was because she had custody of the daughter, so that means she makes decisions about her daughter--asking for Brian's consent/permission was a courtesy in her mind. She'd already decided Kim could go, so she figured getting the ok from Brian was a formality. I don't recall her ever calling Brian "pathetic" throughout the whole movie. In reality, she's just a bit naive about the world, partly because Brian, as a secret agent ''never told her'' all the crap that happens on his job. She sees Brian as being paranoid and overprotective, while she's trying to be the "cool parent". She's misguided, but saying she does all of this ''just'' to spite Brian is just plain not true.
*** And you're mistaken when you recall that she didn't call him 'pathetic' ever in the movie. Yes. Yes she did. When he refused to sign the paper at the dinner and Kimmy ran out, the mom said with complete disgust that he was pathetic and left. And even if she was not doing all this just to spite Brian, she also has to be completely naive (not just ''a bit'') to think it is safe for her daughter to go chasing a band all over Europe. In fact, I'd call her a moron. This Troper's mother agrees with that assessment. It's not exactly kept on the down low that people in mobs are dangerous, and fans more-so. And even if Brian didn't tell her much about his work, she should have still respected his opinion of the dangers.
** Newsflash: most 17 year olds who go on holiday without adult supervision (which is pretty common) don't get kidnapped by sex traffickers, especially somewhere as safe as France. Bryan WAS being overprotective, and she was right to call him pathetic for it. That he was unfortunate enough to have had his paranoid fears proven right doesn't mean he wasn't being paranoid.
*** But Bryan wasn't really saying he didn't want his daughter travelling to France at all, he just didn't want her to go without adult supervision. Which is a completely valid point.
*** It still isn't safe to travel alone, with an irresponsible friend and two others she doesn't know, not merely to a safe area of Paris but traveling all across Europe, with not even as much as regular contact (Lenore calls Brian paranoid for demanding it, implying she didn't demand it herself). Worse yet, she outright encourages her daughter to lie to her father about where she's going, who she's going with, and what she's doing. That is extremely improper conduct unbecoming of any reasonable parent and it's very unsafe behavior for any traveler, let alone for a 17 year old.
* {{MST3K|Mantra}} all the way, but isn't a tad too [[ContrivedCoincidence convenient]] that the ex-CIA agent happens to get his daughter (out of the millions of tourists to France) kidnapped, thus proving his otherwise excessively paranoid and over-protective father to be totally justified? I mean, in the extremely likely event of his daughter not being kidnapped, this movie would have been about a jerk-ass, loser father who won't let his daughter go. And then that bitchy ex-wife would be the voice of reason. Is this film basically saying that one should be excessively paranoid about foreigners and over protective of your children?
** Well, consider also that they were kidnapped because Amanda was a dumbass who gave their address to a total stranger and told him that they were staying by themselves, on the grounds that he was "hot". So the film could also be saying that not giving information to strangers is a good way to not get kidnapped.
** In short, no, it isn't, and Neeson is tired of people thanking him because of that misinterpretation. Thing is, the risks the girls were taking were violations of common sense. If Bryan had been ''less'' controlling, Kim probably would've been ''more'' honest with him, and maybe even more cautious.
*** Or probably not. The daughter almost definitely asked her mom if she could go (tackling the easy parent first) who then very likely told her to lie to her dad. Considering the contempt she shows for him this is pretty standard fare for a divorced family. Considering that the kids were stupid, if there had been a single adult to act as a chaperon none of this could possibly have happened. The dad is right, not because he's a paranoid nutso, which he kind of is, but because as a rule his demand wasn't that extreme. Kids should not be traveling abroad without adult supervision because bad things can happen to them and they might just walk into it without someone else there helping protect them from themselves.
*** I don't know about "none of this could possibly have happened." The guys who grab Kim and Amanda have guns. It wouldn't have taken much for them to, you know, shoot any adult male who was there. (Well, if it wasn't Brian, anyway.)
*** Technically but if an adult was there (particularly an adult male as they might have decided to kidnap an adult female as well) then they probably wouldn't have been targeted in the first place. Peter was looking for young, attractive women travelling alone or nearly-alone because they'd be vulnerable and easy to 'misplace.'
*** Not to mention that murder is a more serious crime than a missing persons case. Not that they're ''unwilling'' to commit murder, but that it brings a lot of extra heat - in short, it's bad for business. Rich tourist girl on holiday doesn't call? Yeah, maybe they'll send a cop or two, maybe do some investigation, and it'll be a cold case unless they're unlucky enough to have a witness. But a father and daughter traveling on holiday ends with the father dead of a gunshot wound in a hotel room and the daughter missing? That's going to bring a LOT more attention.
* Is it just me or is it unfortunate for them to come up with a "CIA" job description that describes the cooperative work of thousands of counter-terrorism experts? "I was a preventer." sounds a lot like "I was Franchise/{{Batman}}."
** It sounded to me more as if he was trying to sanitize/sum up his job for his daughter.
** Maybe he wasn't proud of the things he had to do. Sure, he was "preventing" very bad things from happening, but he had to do bad things to prevent them. But when she asked what he did, he answered vaguely.
** As mentioned, "I prevented bad things from happening" sounds a lot nicer than "I tortured and killed people, most of whom deserved it." Plus, if she has any idea of the detective work and ass-kicking that went into rescuing her, she'd probably consider "I was Batman" to be fairly accurate by the end, anyway.
*** Considering the level of [[TheDeterminator determinator]] he goes to, "I was Batman" is probably a pretty close description to what he was.
*** Kind of ironic considering who he played in ''Film/BatmanBegins''.
*** The guy who taught Batman to batman.
*** It's also very possible that a lot of what Brian did involved still-classified missions. I know two former-military who are legally banned from discussing most of what they did while on active service.
* There's a very odd bit with language in the film. Presumably when Brian is impersonating a French policeman, the whole conversation is in French. (Even Albanian gangsters might get suspicious if a Paris detective speaks nothing but Irish-accented English.) But . . . he then tricks one of the gangsters into repeating a line from their phone conversation. ''Why did the Albanian say it in English?''
** He was translating.
** There's no indication here that there's a TranslationConvention at work anywhere else in the film. That conversation takes place in English, which is another Headscratcher entirely (one mentioned above, if I'm not mistaken.)
*** You're mistaken. He gives the Albanian guy a card with the phrase written on in and asks him what it means in English.
** Possibly just your basic BavarianFireDrill. Let's be honest, few people in their right mind would barge their way into the base of a heavily armed Albanian drug/sex trafficking ring and start extorting money without a good reason.
*** What are you talking about? Is this supposed to be responding to a different question?
** It actually makes some sense that they would be speaking in English, as a default language they'd both understand well enough. He didn't speak Albanian, and maybe the Albanians didn't speak French well.
** English is a lingua franca in Europe. Which in itself is very ironic since French used to be the lingua franca -- it's even in the name. But many, many Europeans will choose English as one of their second languages almost automatically, especially in proximity to the British Isles (the whole U.K. sea border: Denmark 85%, Netherlands 90%, Germany 70%, France 40%). It's probably more unusual for the Albanians to understand English than to understand French, true, and almost as unexpected for Bryan as "Jean-Claude" to be speaking English from the very moment he walked in, but they deal with enough "rich clientele" and with enough tourists that they probably had to pick it up just to function, and it was evidently the correct guess anyway -- that they knew English and not French.
** Since English is not the Albanians' natural language, it's possible they can't tell a French accented Anglophone from an "Irish" accented one. Brian's accent isn't very Irish certainly on the American side of Irish. Many Europeans who are very fluent in English have accents that tend towards either American or English depending on who they learned from.
* Why did it not occur to Kim to just lock the bathroom door when she saw her friend being kidnapped in the beginning of the movie, and why didn't the main character think to suggest that? All right, there were big windows in the room and the kidnappers probably could've broken them and climbed in eventually, but it would've slowed them down enough to give her plenty of time to ask her father for the French equivalent of 911 and then call for help. She had a cell phone! And yes, many of the police were supposed to be corrupt, but it isn't like she'd know that.
** Oddly enough, it turns out teenage girls who are in the middle of an extremely traumatic event they'd never considered or ever prepared for aren't going to be tactical geniuses and think of every possible option that they have. Also, her father couldn't see her. He had no idea what the area around her was like, how is he going to suggest he lock the door or anything like that?
** Plenty of time? The kidnappers had already committed to a potentially violent kidnapping. The time she would have bought in the bathroom MIGHT be enough time to call the cops (who had probably already been called due to neighbors hearing someone screaming bloody murder), but not enough time for the cops to get there (real criminals, and shop owners, generally have a rough idea of how long it would take for a cop to come to their aid). The bathroom door is an internal door and probably just has one of those click-locks. Kidnapper kicks down door, grabs her anyway. She really bought the same amount of time by hiding (admittedly, she picked a crappy spot): If the kidnappers had time to look for her, they had time to kick down a door (that was suspiciously closed and locked).
*** Given how loud the stereo was, the residents downstairs would probably be more likely to roll their eyes and call the police about a noise complaint than they would be to call in a kidnapping in progress, assuming they could hear her screaming at all or assume it was anything other than a pair of "ditzy American brats". (French opinions of the U.S. are often more unkind than vice versa, and the vice versa is already quite unkind. ;-)) Given that Mills finds no evidence of police investigation, the general apathy of the population is almost certainly at work here. Modern police often have to canvass the whole neighbourhood to get people to come forward with any details ''when there's a shooting just outside their homes''.
** Okay, this wouldn't necessarily have ''worked'' for more than a few minutes (or however long it takes to kick down a door in movie-land), but it just seems very strange that the thought never occurs to either of them. No, he couldn't see where she was, but asking something like "Where are you? Indoors? They're in a different room, right? Can you lock them out of the room you're in?" seems reasonable enough. Then again, the MST3KMantra probably applies here. "Can you lock the door?" "Won't work, they'll just kick it down!" "Okay, go hide under something!" would kind of ruin the drama.
*** Interior doors may vary from pathetically flimsy to practically bank vaults, but the odds of you having one that can stand up to someone trying to knock it down for more than a few seconds is slim. Add to that the fact that professional kidnappers are likely to bring crowbars and sledgehammers, and locking a door is just gonna tell them what room you're in. Bryan wouldn't bother telling her to do something that's not really going to help. Especially since just hiding under the bed means it'll take them longer to find her.
* Do real life sex traffickers really make a habit of kidnapping rich white women? I mean, sure, they'll fetch higher prices, as mentioned above, but doesn't doing it also incur unwanted attention? I get the distinct feeling that law enforcement (especially law enforcement that is corrupt, like the ones in this film) will make much more of an attempt to rescue someone whose family has money.
** They do not. Most of the women who get kidnapped into sex slavery are poor foreigners whom nobody will miss.
** Rich white women, no. On the other hand, a poor or lower middle class white woman--especially a naive young girl from a rural area--would be a very tempting target for slavers in the larger US cities.
** Natalee Holloway, anyone?
** read about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Amy_Lynn_Bradley Amy Lynn Bradley]]. she disappeared from a freaking cruise ship and was seen over the years by various people who she begged for help, but nobody did on time and she eventually disappeared completely. that's the most depressing story I ever heard
* Kind of a bit of a PlotHole that I saw when watching this again while getting ready for the sequel- after Brian talks with Jean-Claude, he's followed by a cop who sees him rent an Audi of some kind. After the scene where Brian and the translator talk to the street-walkers and their pimps, Brian heads to the construction site... in a ''jeep''. Where did Brian put the Audi, considering it's never seen again?
** He probably just ditches it and 'borrows' another car because he expects to be followed and wants to lose the guy.
* How on earth does Jean-Claude know where Brian is going in the sequel? I ''seriously'' doubt that he and Brian are still talking to each other after the first movie. Yet we see him getting tortured and then the villains suddenly learn Brian is going to Istanbul.
** LA's quite a bit from Istanbul- Bryan probably had to stop in Paris so that his place could refuel and Jean-Claude was notified, and Bryan probably had to explain that he was just passing through. Alternatively, Jean-Claude has connections in Interpol that gave him a friendly warning.
** They didn't get Bryan's location from Jean-Claude; they got his name and information about him. They got his location from someone else.
** Yeah, they never show Jean-Claude giving his ''location'' away. For all we know, they killed him when it became clear he didn't actually know anything.
* In the sequel when Bryan and Lenore are surrounded by the Albanians, why do they let him pull out a phone and call his daughter?
** I am guessing they didn't want to make the situation any more tense it already is. Bryan was pointing his gun at Thug Number One, Thug Number Two was pointing his gun at Lenore. [[MexicanStandoff Quite tense]]. And since they saw how goddamn badasss Bryan is, they're being careful.
** To stop him, they would have had to either shoot him or take away his phone. They couldn't shoot him because they were instructed to take him alive, and trying to approach him in the middle of a standoff would only provoke a shootout, which would not have been to their advantage.
** Except they had his wife so they could have forced him to drop his phone and gun without getting close and why would they let him call his phone for all they know he might been calling the FBI or police
** To paraphrase ''Series/BurnNotice'', having a hostage means they've got a gun with a single bullet. A bullet they've currently got reserved for making sure he doesn't shoot them all in the face.
* Was it ever actually stated (in film, WordOfGod, etc.) what outfit Bryan used to belong to?
** No.
* What happened to the other two girls that were brought in with the Sheikh? Where did they go?
** They weren't needed to try and save the Sheikh's life so they were probably waiting in another room and Bryan got them to the police or a hospital or at least a phone or something before going home with Kim.
* In both Taken and Taken 2, how did Bryan get back to the US so easily after a RoaringRampageOfRescue that leaves numerous people dead? Okay, arguably most of these deaths (but not all of them) could be justified as self-defence, but you'd think the local authorities in France and Turkey would want to at least investigate the case, especially since among his victims was a rich and powerful sheikh (in the first movie) and ''a freakin' police officer'' (in the sequel)? The first movie doesn't specify how long it takes for Bryan to get home, but in the second movie it's specifically stated he's back in Los Angeles a couple of weeks later (and it's implied he's been there for days already). I guess it's theoretically possible the US government and/or his pals at the CIA managed to smuggle him out of the country without the local authorities noticing, but would they really have done this for a rogue retired agent who goes on a killing spree in an European country? At the very least his actions in the first movie would have created a diplomatic scandal between France and the US, which would've meant the Albanians in the second movie wouldn't have had to torture the French cop to find out who Bryan is, as his identity would've been common knowledge.
** In the first film, at least, Bryan seems to make something of an effort to remain very low-key, probably ensuring that few people in the country besides his victims saw him or knew he'd come, and not staying in one place for more than a night. In addition, Albanian mobsters probably wouldn't be too comfortable reporting a mass killing of their own members to the cops - they'd probably rather deal with that sort of thing themselves. Considering that, and the fact that Bryan had only just arrived in the country, it could theoretically be possible for him to slip out again before all the deaths could be positively traced back to him by the authorities.
** Except that the authorities already know who he is and what he's doing midway into the movie, as Jean-Claude informs the cops about Bryan, and the French police are shown tailing him.
* A Headscratcher related to the one above: In the second movie, Bryan escapes to the local authorities to the US embassy, but then later on simply walks out of there. Since he'd shot a Turkish cop, why didn't the embassy detain him? And why wasn't the Istanbul police waiting outside the embassy to arrest him?
** The alternate ending on the DVD shows a bit more of what happens after Bryan calls his CIA buddy and tells him to make a call to the embassy to let them know what happened. It looks like his buddy explaining everything worked because one of the people from the Embassy called off the guards and met with Bryan before he went off to kill all the bad guys.
*** That still doesn't explain why Turkish police isn't waiting for him outside, so they can arrest him the minute he leaves the Embassy area and enters their jurisdiction.
*** CIA buddy calls the closest thing he has to a friendly counterpart in Turkey, calls in a favor, boom, done.
*** I don't think Bryan's CIA buddies (or anyone in CIA) would have so much influence over Turkish authorities that they could just get a destructive car chase (which was witnessed by many, and endangered the lives of innocent people) and a murder of a police officer swept under the rug.
* With all the kidnappings of young girls at the airports, one can wonder why people aren't "spammed" with warnings of going to Paris. We see no indications of this.
** No one was kidnapped at the airport. They were kidnapped later, and only a joint investigation would reveal that they were targeted at the airport. Which didn't happen, because the police were taking kickbacks.
** Besides, the selection of the targets seemed to be pretty professional - alone, new to the country, no real adults around, easy to misplace. Had Bryan's daughter not been on the phone with him at the time that they broke in to grab them, they would have had zero leads. The cops (clean or otherwise) can't make a case with no real information.
** Hell, if Bryan hadn't been on the phone with her at that second, nobody would have known she was missing at all for at least a day, and then they have no leads and they're a day late. Also, people just plain disappear all the time. Oddly enough, the missing persons' rate is frighteningly close to the rates at which prey animals are killed by predators in the wild. You could just disappear--forever, never to be seen again alive by anyone you had ever previously known--off of any street in the US, but you don't see bunches of warnings about going outside.
* In the first movie, Bryan fakes out Jean-Claude and the french cops by duct taping his cell phone to a walkie talkie. The radio he used looked like a small civilian version. Aren't those all push to talk? And if it wasn't, would that create a feedback loop with the cell phone?
* What's the deal with St. Clair? Why does an upper-class Parisian socialite speak perfect English with a generic North American accent? Was he meant to be some kind of expatriate?
** [[WildMassGuessing While he was born in France, Patrice St. Clair was raised and educated in America before returning to his native land, sans accent.]]
** Or he might be Franco-American, with a French father and American mother, hence the American English.
* I may be missing something, but what happened to the prostitute that Bryan rescued from the construction site? Did he just leave her in the hotel? Because, considering she was forcibly addicted to drugs...
** No reason to assume he didn't go back to make certain she was okay after he saved Kim, don't forget this all took place over a span of a day or so at most. Plus the owner clearly knows him and is implied to be a friend, and while he probably doesn't know exactly what he did for a living, he presumably got briefed he was a good guy. So he could just explain it away as being part of some classified mission and he needs him to look after her while he finishes it.
* Why did Bryan tell Kim to leave her cell phone on the floor and yell out the descriptions? Wouldn't it make more sense for her to keep it in her pocket while describing them? And on the rare (very rare) chance that they don't automatically search them for phones or weapons, Kim might be able to stash the phone somewhere to use later or Bryan could track her location with it.
** If it's in her pocket, any sound will be muffled not only by that, but also by all the movement involved in the people grabbing and taking her. Also, there's a high chance the phone will be damaged or broken in the struggle.
* What did the villain in the second movie think the consequences of running a human trafficking ring was going to be? Even in the best case scenario, human slavers very rarely die at home in bed. And now he's pissed that his family's monstrous actions had actual consequences?
** [[MoralMyopia Pretty much]]. Plus, when you're in any sort of cutthroat criminal enterprise, you can't afford to look weak, so the best way to remedy any appearance of weakness is to [[MakeAnExampleOfThem kill the one who wronged you]].
* "Very specific set of skills" implies that the person has an obscure and trivial ability that would almost never come in handy, like the ability to list all of the Byzantine emperors in order or craft authentic 14th century Inca baskets or identify any [=ZZ=] Top song from one line of lyrics. Bryan's combat, stealth, interrogation, investigation, and killing skillset is, in fact, quite broad and not at all specific. Why does he say this?
** There is nothing in that phrasing that implies any of that at all. "Specific" does not mean obscure or trivial. You are ''inferring'' that and drawing a meaning from the line that was never intended and is not at all implied by the line itself.
* Is that nifty miniature phone device Mills uses in the second film a real product? Even if, say, only accessible to spy agencies?
----