I realize that the punchline of today’s comic is a cheap bit of slapstick, but I can’t resist when things start getting serious.

Can you tell that Jimmy is hurting? And not just from the door swinging open at 20 miles per hour (who knew the bathroom door was on a double-hinge?) I’m drawing things out a little bit, but Jimmy’s fear of the women’s restroom has less to do with a nervous Nellie insecurity around the fairer sex than one might have previously assumed.

I think you guys are really going to like where I go with this next. The challenge for me at this moment is to move past the exposition and start digging deeper into Jimmy’s past.

I’m not usually very graceful when it comes to these transitions. I have to take the Band-Aid approach to them: Just rip it off and get it over with. The Band-Aid in this case would be my propensity to keep the characters in one place doing the talking head’s routine before one of them slips on a banana peel.

I was able to get out of the house this weekend and see Liam Neeson in Taken. I had a lot of fun at this movie. It’s a solid B-action thriller. What’s great about it, I think, is that 1.) It is absolutely cut-throat and 2.) Liam Neeson is pretty much unstoppable.

It’s funny. If it were a Tom Cruise movie featuring some square-jawed action guy dodging a hail of bullets and kicking ass, I would reject it. But because it’s Neeson, I totally buy it. That guy brings so much authority and command to everything he does. There’s not an “actory” bone in his body. He just… does the work and makes it look real.

Taken is the kind of movie Harrison Ford would have done 10 years ago. Except this time instead of a missing wife, Neeson is searching for his missing daughter who has been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade by Albanian thugs in Paris.

Watching this movie reminded me when I went to Edinburgh with a friend in 1999. My Dad warned me about strange people and (without getting into it) basically told me to keep my wits about me so I don’t get raped.

I don’t know if he was confused for a minute or if what he said came out wrong, but my family and I have been torturing him about it ever since.

Thankfully, I wasn’t raped by a Scottish highlander on my excusion, but I understand a little more clearly his parental concern after watching Taken.

Should I have been taken advantage of in some way 10 years ago, I’m not sure my Dad would travel over half the globe to put a massive smackdown on a network of European criminals… but stranger things have happened.

I think what I love about Taken is that it goes to NO effort toward making Neeson into a hero. This guy kills EVERYONE. He doesn’t negotiate. He shoots people in the back! He’ll graze your wife with a .45 slug if it gets him closer to finding his daughter!

I don’t know if I’ve been asked to sympathize with a remoresless protagonist in this way before. I wasn’t bothered by it. I think they were pretty much counting on the audience to give Neeson’s character full reign because – hey – his daughted had been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade! That pretty much excuses any bloody mess you start to stir up in a foreign city.

What’s crazy is that this movie has been out in Austrailia for over a year before we got a chance to see it here in America. Usually, it’s the other way around. I’m not even entirely sure at what point it came up on my radar. But I saw the riviting trailer at some point (“This is the important part (pause) They are going to take you.”) and knew it was a must-see for me.

He’s what’s even crazier… Taken took the box office crown this weekend earning nearly $25 million in ticket sales! That’s Paul Blart money we’re talking about here, folks.

Frankly, I’m glad Neeson put a movie like this under his belt. For too long I think audiences have viewed him as a the firm but kind fatherly type and it was a pleasure to see him put that on it’s ear. Neeson’s performance in Taken reminded me of another film where he was a complete bad-ass. One of my favorites, actually, Rob Roy.

Waitaminute… Neeson played a Scottish highlander in that movie! OH, DEAR GOD! I CAN SEE THROUGH TIME!

I’m really excited to talk about Taken tonight at 9:00 PM CST when we record our weekly podcast, The Triple Feature. Did you know we record it over at TalkShoe.com? Because we do.

This was a movie that all three of us agreed to see last week and I think we actually made it happen – which is kind of rare since I don’t leave the house much anymore. I think we’re at our best when the three of us have all seen the same thing, so if you listen live tonight, I think you’ll be in for a treat.

In the meantime, who else here saw Taken this weekend? What did you think? Leave your comments below!