MovieChat Forums > Taken: The Search for Sophie Parker (2013) Discussion > You know how the real Taken was kinda ri...

You know how the real Taken was kinda ridiculous?...well... ..(SPOILERS)

posted 11 years ago by zensixties
5 replies | jump to latest

I just saw this film on Lifetime. Not only is the title, but practically every single element of the original script of Taken is used in this one. I'm not saying it's without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's supposed to be set in Moscow, however the filming location is Sofia, Bulgaria, so if you're not familiar with that part of the world (I am) you probably won't notice the difference.

Where to begin. At the beginning of Sophie's trip to Moscow her mother Stevie asked if she has her passport. Actually for an American to go to Moscow you need more than a passport, you need a visa.

We get the relationship thingy between Stevie (Julie Benz), an FBI agent scared of commitment after her husband died (sound familiar?) and Devlin. Anyway, Sophie and her friend Janie, daughter of the US Ambassador to Russia, arrive and are restricted to the US Embassy, so sneak out for one night on the town, and...wait for it....they are taken. From there the script follows the original Taken pretty much verbatim, except it's Russia, not France, and it's Chechen Mafia (writer's obviously threw in that due to the Boston bombing), not Albanian one.

So two women, Stevie, and fellow leather jacket wearing CIA agent find the spotter, Bobby, use cell phones to trace the two abductees, and zero dark thirty their way out of that hellhole. Sound familiar?

At the end it says 46,000 people have been victims of sex trafficking this year alone. I can guarantee you none of them were the daughter of the US Ambassador to Russia...or any other country for that matter. As with the original, and better but still ridiculous film Taken, abducting American girls on vacation in European countries is not just uncommon, but extremely unlikely, at least for daughters of FBI agents and US Ambassadors.

Finally I'd like to address the marketing strategy, "inspired by a true story". What has been pointed out already is this most likely refers to the fact that somewhere in the world at some time, someone was abducted by sex traffickers....unless they're referring to the Cleveland thing, but Julie Benz isn't quite Charles Ramsey, and definitely not Liam Neeson.

Anyway, it's not a total throw away, as it's worth watching on some level, if only to see a little bit of Sofia, Bulgaria (even though it's supposed to be Moscow.

The only thing that would've made this good is if at the end Stevie who end with this line: "I feel like Liam Neeson in Taken".
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For who would bear the whips and scorns of Hollywood... (;-p)

[–] levoices 11 years ago

Your visa is within your passport. At least on '08 it was when I went to Russia. Sucks they couldn't film in Russia but Sofia is a pretty awesome place too.

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

It was already like that in 2002.

[–] jdzencel-1 10 years ago

So wait, did the Ambassador's daughter die?

[–] KenyaOne 10 years ago

Actually, that the abductors were Chechen is one of the most realistic elements of the film! - There is so much "propaganda" in the USA that few of us even know that much of the so-called "Russian" mafia is actually Chechen or Georgian (like Joseph Stalin) and very few actual Russians. Why? Because as the poet Lermentov once noted, almost 200 years ago, the Muslim Caucasus peoples have no science or industry, their most notable income is from long a history of smuggling (guns, drugs, and sex slaves). This is not a political opinion, just facts that can easily be checked.

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

Thanks for disclosing that this was filmed in Sofia, Bucarest. I was already wondering about the filming location.

Being a big Liam Neeson fan (and also a fan of his "Taken" trilogy), I enjoyed this TV version very much.

The visa usually gets attached to the US passport. At least that's how the American embassy in Frankfort handled it when I immigrated to the US. So it's not a passport plus an extra visa, but they send you the passport via mail with the visa inside the passport firmly attached to it.