Taken

The action thriller Taken was released in 2008. Its was a Luc Besson's Europacorp production, was directed by Pierre Morel and distributed by 20th century fox. They had a budget of an estimated $25,000,000 and on the opening weekend in the UK made £1,165,986 alone.

The film is follows a 17 year old called Kim who’s the "pride and joy" of her father who is a retired agent. When her father allows her to travel to Paris with her friend, on their arrival an Albanian gang of human traffickers kidnaps them. When her father hears the kidnapper promising to kill his daughter, he travels to Paris to try and find and save her from them.

Taken Trailer:

At the beginning of the trailer, the first scenes you see are of the father and the birthday girl (daughter). From this, you can automatically see a strong bond between the father and daughter from their body language towards each other to the lighting and peaceful music in the scene, which creates a happy atmosphere. When the scene changes to the airport, the music is still quite upbeat and it still feels like a happy atmosphere. As you hear the flash sound of the picture being taken, the scene switches and the music stops and instead you hear a loud drum noise and a phone ringing which creates a lot of suspense. It turns out to be the father on the line to the daughter however, something does not seem right and the scene and music contradicts each other. This is maybe foreshadowing the coming events.

Throughout the movie there are many scenes which i believe create a build up to suspense or mystery.  

In this scene you see a mysterious close up of someones footsteps and the other of the friend dancing. This automatically leaves the audience wondering and reinforces the sense of suspence but the seriousness they are trying to create. Then in the next seen is when you see the friend being abducted by unknown people and a close up of Kim's reaction.

This is when you see the daughter being dragged from under the bed by the kidnapper after she had been on the phone to her father telling him what is happening. In this scene, the lighting was very dim highlighting that it is supposed to be a serious scene.  

This is a scene shot of when you see someone being tortured in an electric chair however you don’t find out who until a couple seconds later building on apprehension.

Thought Taken, there were not many special effects that were very noticeable; I think this was deliberate as it was supposed to be an action thriller. However, the use of suspense and creating an atmosphere for the audience was a big part of the film.