15 years later, it’s still easy to see how Taken redefined the action genre

French director Pierre Morel’s Taken came out in U.S. theaters 15 years ago this month, meaning we’ve been able to intermittently enjoy a decade and a half of star Liam Neeson’s attempts to just do Taken again, and again and again and again. And why shouldn’t he? Taken made $200 million past its budget and rebuilt Neeson’s career, and if the premise of “older guy you wouldn’t expect to be an action star” was good in 2009 when he was in his 50s, then it only gets better as he gets older.

Though it quickly became a genuine phenomenon, mostly thanks to Neeson’s instantly iconic speech in which he mentions his “particular set of skills” (Tom Breihan, writing for The A.V. Club, credited the trailer’s use of the speech for most of Taken’s success) the movie wasn’t exactly lauded by critics. Roger Ebert notably seemed kind of baffled by the whole thing, ultimately giving two-and-a-half stars to a film that he figured was well made and fun to watch while also being very, very stupid. Still, Taken effectively redefined the action genre for a while.

If the Bourne movies were vaguely prestigious, then Taken was happy to be a little trashier and scummier, positioning its crusading hero not as a Real Guy who solved problems the way a Real Guy would, but as something like a noble Jason Voorhees who is always in the right place at the right time and can always overcome any obstacle—also he saves young women instead of killing them, which is pretty crucial.

Watching Taken now, it’s somewhat remarkable how Neeson’s character (Bryan Mills, a name you’d have to look up even if you were currently watching Taken and Neeson had just introduced himself by name) almost always has the upper hand in fight scenes. John Wick, the series that eventually re-redefined the action genre, is very much not about a normal guy, but Wick famously takes the occasional beating and feels the effects of those beatings as each movie goes on. Bryan Mills, meanwhile, is more like a superhero who punches a goon one time and immediately kills him or who shrugs off bullet wounds and car crashes.

But that’s really the appeal of Taken. The iconic part of this first movie in the series is Neeson’s speech, which comes—shockingly—nearly a half hour into the film, meaning you have to sit through a third of Taken before the proverbial shit pops off. Once it does, and Neeson switches from sad-sack divorced dad mode (sitting in the dark eating Chinese food, having his old CIA buddies show up for a lonely grill party at night, grimacing as his daughter’s rich new step-dad buys her a pony), the movie never slows down. It’s just Neeson finding a clue to his daughter’s disappearance, Neeson killing some jerk, and then Neeson getting another clue.

It’s his “particular set of skills” in action, and like it was for Ebert 15 years ago, it’s still kind of … frustratingly compelling today. Taken really clips along at a fast pace, making the most of its 90 minutes, and it’s not until you stop to think about the parts that are stupid that you realize they’ve only gotten stupider in the years since.

For one thing, the movie is awkwardly dedicated to slut-shaming, with Neeson’s daughter (Kim, played by Maggie Grace) and her friend Amanda (future Arrowverse player Katie Cassidy) pretty much only getting taken in the first place because Amanda wants to have sex with a European boy that the two of them met immediately after getting off the plane. That European boy, of course, works for Albanian sex traffickers and he leads the bad guys right to the apartment where the two girls are staying.

Once Neeson finds the sex traffickers, it turns out that Amanda is dead and Kim has been sent off to some worse bad guys because she’s a virgin. So one girl is dead because she made the mistake of having pre-marital sex before she was taken, and the other must be rescued and protected at all costs for being—as the movie grossly puts it in a truly terrifying auction scene—“pure.” Also, we never see Kim mourn the nightmarish death of her friend, but we do see her get rewarded for surviving with a chance to audition for a famous pop singer at the end. Do Amanda’s parents know that their daughter was killed while Kim’s dad murdered his way across Paris trying to save his own daughter?

That’s the kind of uncomfortable question you don’t want people thinking about when they leave their otherwise crowd-pleasing action movie. It’s as uncomfortable as the sudden reveal of new supervillains in the final act speaking Arabic who are led by a bathrobe wearing sheikh who just sits in bed on a yacht waiting for his goons to bring him naked women. Every other bad guy in the movie is explicitly referred to as an Albanian, and there’s a scene where one of Neeson’s French contacts talks about Albanians infesting the otherwise crime-free city of Paris, so the ending suggests that the only thing more evil than non-French Europeans is anyone from the Middle East.

That shit sucks. A lot. And as weird as it was when Maverick shot unspecified bad guys in the Top Gun sequel, the alternative is so much worse.

But people don’t remember Taken for that (which is exactly what makes it so off-putting when the big villain is revealed). They remember the simple joy of seeing Neeson make good on his threats to the bad guys. It’s still clear why people liked this movie so much when it came out, but it’s just as clear why people were ready for something new when John Wick came along in 2014 and introduced clever choreography and action sequences created with an artistic eye that things like Taken and Bourne (with its quick cuts) were lacking. Then there are the Mission: Impossible and Fast And Furious franchises, which have steadily ratcheted up the spectacle with each sequel in a way that would strain what little believability Taken had if that franchise were to try something similar.

Taken only came out 15 years ago, but it’s still very much “of its time.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the things that were bad about it then are much worse now. And yet, the things that were good are still good, and there’s a good chance that you could recite Neeson’s “particular set of skills” speech before you remember the name of the character he played.