Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Holly Valance, Katie Cassidy, Xander Berkeley, Olivier Rabourdin, Gerard Watkins, Famke Janssen, Marc Amyot, Arben Bajraktaraj, Rasha Bukvic, Mathieu Busson, Michel Flash, Nicolas Giraud, Rubens Hyka, Camille Japy, Valentin Kalaj, Fani Kolarova, Goran Kostic, Christophe Kourotchkine, Edwin Kruger, Jalil Naciri, Anca Radici, Nathan Rippy, Helena Soubeyrand, Tommy Spahija, Anatole Taubman, Bertrand Treuil, Opender Singh, Christy Reese, George Hertzberg, Nabil Massad, Ivette Gonzalez
Brian Mills (Neeson) buys a karaoke machine, carefully gift-wraps it, and brings it to his 17-year-old daughter’s birthday party. The party is at a mansion, the home of his ex-wife, Lenore (Janssen), and her very wealthy husband, Stuart (Berkeley). Brian is met by Lenore, who tries to discourage him from being there at all, and then by his daughter Kim (Grace), who is delighted to see him and accepts his gift with glee. Kim has dreamed of being a pop singer since she was a young child. Then her step-father, Stuart, walks into the grounds leading a horse, his birthday present to Kim, and she runs to thank Stuart and ride the horse. Brian is a former CIA field agent. After his long-neglected wife divorced him, realizing his extended absences had made him a stranger to his daughter, Brian retired from the Agency so that he could be closer to Kim. Brian hosts a steak-and-beer party for three of his buddies, men he used to work with at a CIA special activities section. One of his friends, Sam (Orser), invites Brian to join him in a one-night assignment providing security for a popular singer, Sheerah (Valance). At Sheerah’s concert, her own bodyguards do a poor job of crowd control, and when a crazed guy attacks her with a knife Brian goes into action and disables the maniac. Brian gets a very pleasant phone call from his daughter. She asks him to meet her for lunch and he readily agrees. To Brian’s disappointment, Kim is accompanied by Lenore. Rather than a friendly chat, Kim and Lenore’s purpose it to get Brian to sign a parental consent form that would allow Kim to travel to Paris with her teenage friend Amanda (Cassidy). Brian is opposed to the idea of two teenage girls traveling outside the country, but Lenore persuades him and he signs the form. Before Kim leaves, he cautions Kim about the dangers of a foreign city and asks her to call him daily on a special international cell phone he provides. At the airport in Paris, Kim and Amanda are approached by a personable young Frenchman, Peter (Giraud), who offers to share a taxicab. When they arrive at the building where the girls will be staying, Peter slickly gets Amanda to reveal the apartment number. Peter makes a phone call relaying information about the girls. Soon three men break into the girls’ apartment. Kim is talking on the phone with Brian when she sees the men capture Amanda. Terrified, she tells Brian. He immediately attaches a recorder to the phone and asks Kim to tell him as much about the attackers as she can. The attackers soon locate Kim and carry her away, screaming. She only manages to say a few words before she’s taken, but Brian is able to record conversations in a foreign language among the attackers. Aware that someone has picked up Kim’s phone, Brian speaks to them. “If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” After a long pause, the leader of the attackers says, “Good luck,” and smashes the phone. Brian tells Sam what has happened and provides him a copy of the phone recording. He then meets with Lenore and Stuart, who are horrified to hear the news. Sam is able to provide information garnered from the recording by CIA analysts. The language of the attackers is Albanian. Their leader is a man called Marko (Bajraktaraj). They are Albanian gangsters operating a sex trade ring. They kidnap attractive young tourists, drug them, and run them as prostitutes or sell them off as sex slaves. Brian travels to Paris in a private jet provided by Stuart and immediately starts the search for Kim and Amanda’s abductors. Brian’s old friend, Jean-Claude (Rabourdin), a former French field operative and now a Police administrator, provides information about the ruthless Albanian sex traders. As he penetrates the seamy underworld of human traffickers, Brian uses his espionage tradecraft, local contacts, and deadly combat skills to single-mindedly pursue his objective, to get back his daughter. He must act rapidly. Sam has told him that once the girls are taken, if they are not recovered within 96 hours they vanish forever. Screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.
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