Liam Neeson

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LIAM NEESON….Peter Suderman writes that Taken is “a formulaic tough-guy revenge picture….short, ultra-violent, occasionally sadistic, not particularly creative, and packed with a continent’s worth of stereotypical foreign uglies.” But he liked it anyway. Why? Because it stars Liam Neeson.

I’m not surprised. Neeson is, after all, our greatest living actor. How do I know this? Consider: every single actor directed by George Lucas in the second Star Wars trilogy gave a performance that could only charitably be called embarrassing. The lone exception was Liam Neeson, who, against all odds, managed to overcome Lucas’s leaden dialog and clunky direction and turn in an appealing, understated performance anyway. If that’s not evidence that he’s our greatest living actor, I don’t know what is.