For this unapologetic revenge thriller resembles an Arnie/Sly flick in every way, except that the leading man is played with a degree of panache by Liam Neeson even while director Pierre Morel is making nods to Lethal Weapon, Eye for an Eye and Collateral Damage.

Neeson is Bryan, the over-protective dad and ex-FBI operative who allows his estranged 17-year-old daughter to go on a trip to Paris with a friend. As soon as the girls arrive, they are snatched – but not before daughter calls dad who listens as the kidnap is played out over the phone.

Soon he's en route to Paris. He quickly locates the boy who set up the kidnap and just as quickly gets him killed. From that point on he is propelled into a deadly netherworld of drugs and prostitution as he wages a personal war on the men who stole his child. A less stylised version of Tony Scott's Man on Fire, Taken adopts both a grimy, ultra-realistic approach with an element of cartoon violence and a risible script that draws hoots of laughter. It's delivered straight-faced by Neeson, but one wonders whether it might once have been aimed at Steven Seagal.

Taken is Neeson's film, and he is quite superb. He combines the warmth and love of a father with the talents and aggressive manner of a war machine. He's dangerous and someone who sums up the character of so many men of his ilk: they may put away their guns, but they never forget.

If Luc Besson's script has one over-arching flaw, it is the judgmental way in which Neeson's innocent daughter is shown to be "good" while her flighty friend – precocious and sexually confident – is set up as "bad". There is no excuse for hinting that one of them had it coming. Taken comes from the same stable as the Bourne films but has little of the finesse. It's action all the way with an ageing star that fits it like a glove.