Bryan (Liam Neeson) is a retired Government Agent. He is at an
electronics store and is carefully choosing a karaoke device for his
beloved 17-year-old daughter Kim's (Maggie Grace) birthday. Arriving at
a luxury mansion, Kim's mother Lenore (Famke Janssen) is very rude to
him. Criticizing his choice of a gift and that he has even showed in
the first place. The daughter is extremely pleased with her gift;
however, she is soon distracted by her wealthy stepfather Stuart's
(Xander Berkeley) gift of a large horse. Later, Bryan is alone in his
small modest apartment. Three friends, all also retired agents, drop by
for poker, steaks and beer. One of them, Sam (Leland Orser) invites
Bryan to make some quick cash working security with them by escorting a
female pop star to her nearby concert. After her vocal warm-up Bryan
asks the pop star Sheera (Holly Vance) for advice to give his daughter
who also wishes to be a singer. Sheera answers, "Don't become one." At
the concert, things get anxious for a moment when security is
distracted by a mob of fans breaking through. Bryan escorts Sheera away
from the crowd, but is confronted with a knife-wielding assailant that
Bryan quickly takes down. As a "Thank You," Sheera offers to help
Bryan's daughter with a vocal coach and a manager if she has any
natural talent.
Later, Bryan gets a phone call from Kim inviting
him to lunch. He is very excited and plans to let her know about
Sheera's offer; however, Lenore comes to the lunch also and it becomes
clear he was invited only to sign the parental-consent form Kim needs
to take a vacation to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy).
Bryan is reluctant to agree, knowing the dangers of the wrong parts of
Paris, but Kim explains she'll be staying with Amanda's cousins and
spend most of her time in museums. Bryan says he will consider the
matter, but Kim takes it as a "no" and runs out crying. Lenore tears
into Bryan for being such an a**hole and for being too cautious. She
wants their daughter to experience life. The next day, Bryan shows up
at the Stuart mansion with the signed consent, a pre-paid international
cell phone, and some conditions: 1) Bryan must take Kim to the airport;
2) Kim must call Bryan when she lands in Paris; and 3) Kim must call
Bryan every night to tell him the address and phone number of any new
place at which she will be sleeping. At the airport, as Bryan is
retrieving Kim's luggage from the car, he sees a map of Europe with
several cities circled in a pocket of Kim's luggage. He confronts
Lenore who admits that the girls are actually going to follow U2's
European tour, not just stay in Paris. Bryan is angry, but it is too
late to do anything about it.
In Paris, while standing in the
line for a taxi at the airport, the two girls meet a friendly, handsome
young Parisian named Peter (Nicolas Giraud). He suggests they all share
a taxi for the expensive ride downtown. Amanda immediately accepts and
Kim reluctantly agrees. While they wait, they have Peter take their
picture with Kim's phone. Chivalrous Peter has the taxi drop the girls
off first. He invites them to a party that very night and Amanda
eagerly accepts. As the taxi pulls away, Peter makes a quick phone
call--he simply says "Two girls about 18" and the address of the
apartment. Upstairs, Kim inquires where the cousins are at. Amanda
breezily announces the cousins are on vacation in Spain and giggly
announces as she jumps on the couch that she plans to have sex with
Peter later on.
Back in the US, a concerned Bryan checks the
arrival information and learns that Kim's plane has landed. Bryan
attempts to call Kim's phone; however, Amanda has cranked the music in
the apartment to such a volume that neither girl hears Kim's phone
ring. Finally, Bryan gets hold of Kim. Kim walks around to the other
side of the loft (shaped like a square with a courtyard in between) to
get away from the loud music. While they talk, Kim can see Amanda
through the windows across the courtyard. As she talks to her dad, she
sees two men grab Amanda and carry her body away from view while Amanda
kicks and fights. Panicked, Kim tells Bryan what she just saw. Bryan
immediately takes control and orders her to go into the nearest bedroom
and hide under the bed. Guiding her with a careful series of questions,
he learns that Kim and Amanda shared a cab with a man named Peter. Kim
thinks she saw three or four man take Amanda. "Now," he tells her, "the
next part is very important ... they are going to take you." Bryan
tells her that she must leave her phone on, and she will have five to
ten seconds to scream out any description of them she can. Bryan hooks
up a tape recorder to his phone. Two men enter the bedroom and are
puzzled they haven't found the second girl. They converse in a foreign
language. Bryan tells Kim to hold the phone towards the men so he can
hear their conversation. The two men appear to have left the room and
Kim is relieved and tells her dad they left, when suddenly Kim is
snatched from under the bed. Following Bryan's instructions, she
screams out, "Beard! Six Feet! Tattoo, right hand, moon and star!"
Bryan hears her scream for a few more seconds, then, after a moment of
quiet, Bryan hears heavy breathing. Bryan tells the kidnapper, "I don't
know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for
ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a
very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long
career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. 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.". . . the kidnapper responds with a
thick accent, "Good Luck."
Bryan sends the taped conversation to
Sam, his ex-agency friend from the concert. Bryan then storms over to
Stuart's, his wife's second husband, and confronts him about possible
business enemies of Stuart arranging Kim's kidnapping. Stuart and
Lenore are surprised about how much of Stuart's business Bryan knows.
Bryan is satisfied that Stuart business affairs are not the source of
the problem, and he tells Stuart he needs a private jet to Paris "an
hour ago." Bryan searches Kim's room and all her personal possessions
for possible clues. Meanwhile, he is on speaker phone with Sam so
Lenore can hear. Sam provides a detailed report that identifies the
language as Albanian and he even narrows the accent down to one
particular town in Albania. Their leader's name is Marko and he is a
very powerful figure. Sam tells him that the Albanians kidnap girls for
prostitution and Bryan has, at most, 96 hours (four days) before Kim
will disappear forever.
On the private jet, Bryan plays the
recording of Kim's abduction over and over again, committing every
sound to memory. In Paris, Bryan first gains access to the girl's
apartment. He visualizes the abduction from the clues left behind at
the scene and finds and recovers the memory card from Kim's smashed
cellphone which is adjacent to the bed under which Kim tried to hide.
At a do-it-yourself photo kiosk, Bryan finds the picture Peter took at
the airport and zooms in on a reflection of Peter in the photo. At the
airport, Peter is using the same "share a taxi" line with a Swedish
blonde. Bryan assaults Peter to find out about the girls from
yesterday; however a large man, Peter's accomplice, tries to stop
Bryan. As Bryan fights off the large man, Peter runs away. Bryan
disposes of the man and gives chase stealing the taxi cab. Peter runs
into traffic and Bryan jumps out of the taxi and chases Peter on foot.
Peter then jumps over the overpass, but a truck hits and kills him.
Bryan
then meets with an old acquaintance named Jean-Claude, who is with
French Intelligence, to ask for help. The Frenchman tells Bryan where
the Albanian-pimped hookers are located, but warns Bryan to stay out of
it and to not cause any problems. As Bryan leaves, Jean-Claude sets up
a tail to follow him. After getting a rental car, Bryan meets with an
Albanian interpreter whom he's hired at the hooker area, first telling
him to wait in the car. Bryan then deliberately wastes a prostitute's
time so her pimp will come over to rough up the mild-mannered Bryan and
demand some money. Bryan then plants a listening device on the pimp
unbeknownst to the pimp. Back in the car, Bryan has the interpreter
listen to the audio feed from the bug and translate the Albanian
conversation. They talk about having trouble with some new merchandise
at a nearby construction site. Bryan excuses the interpreter, but not
before getting the Albanian-English dictionary he had asked him to
bring.
At the construction site, there is a long line of men
waiting to get into a trailer. Bryan acts like a customer and joins the
line. When Bryan reaches the head of the line, he hands the "doorman"
his money and receives a scrap of paper with a single digit on it.
Inside the trailer ropes have been strung with blankets draped over
them to form 'rooms' on either side of a center aisle. As Bryan walks
down the aisle, he looks into each 'room.' Bryan enters one 'room' and
finds a cot with a drugged woman lying on it. She isn't Kim. She
beckons him to come to her, but, instead, he starts pulling more
blankets aside to check the other 'rooms.' Since each room has a
customer, this invasion of privacy starts a ruckus. Bryan has to deal
with a few bouncers as he makes his way along the length of the
trailer. In the last room, Bryan sees his daughter's jacket and a
drugged woman with hair like Kim's. Rushing in, he finds it isn't Kim.
Bryan tries to question this woman, but she is so drugged she can't
talk. So Bryan carries her to a nearby Jeep, hot-wires the ignition,
and, after a wild chase, makes his escape from a swarm of angry
Albanians. He drives to a quiet out-of-the-way hotel and rents two
room, from the owner (another old acquaintance). In one of the rooms,
Bryan rigs up an IV drip and injects the girl with a solution to rid
the girl's system of drugs.
Later, Jean-Claude demands a meeting
with Bryan out in the open by the river. When Jean-Claude arrives, his
cell phone rings. It is Bryan saying he doesn't trust meeting
Jean-Claude (until he gets Kim back). Jean-Claude says his boss hit the
roof over the construction site violence. While the boss wanted Bryan
arrested, Jean-Claude has convinced him to authorize instead a ticket
to send Bryan back to America, "for previous services." Bryan refuses.
Meanwhile, Jean-Claude's men have been triangulating the source of
Bryan's phone call and a squad of men burst onto a nearby rooftop.
There they find a cell phone rigged with a walkie talkie. Bryan is
actually on another roof nearby. Bryan walks away easily.
The
girl comes back to consciousness and tells Bryan she got the jacket
from another girl. All she can remember is it was at a house with a red
doors on the rue Paradis. Bryan finds the house with the red doors,
walks in bold and confident, and presents Jean-Claude's business card
as his own. Bryan is led past several thugs to a dirty kitchen. Four
Albanians are seated around a table. Bryan tries to ascertain who is
the leader, but they all claim to be Marko and all from the town that
Bryan's language expert had identified. Bryan tells them that their
former police contact, Mr. Macon, had been transferred and now he
(Bryan as Jean-Claude) will be collecting the bribes, the rate for
which has just gone up. After some hard bargaining, a deal is struck
and Bryan thinks he has identified the figure from Kim's phone. But,
before he leaves, Bryan stops and says a friend gave him a note in
Albanian. He hands it to the apparent leader and asks him to translate
it. The leader (the real Marko) responds "Good Luck." Bryan recognizes
Marko's voice immediately and says to him, "You don't remember me do
you?. . . I told you I was going to find you," and, suddenly Bryan is
shooting and fighting the house full of armed men. When the smoke
clears, Bryan has killed all of them but Marko. Bryan searches for Kim
in all the upper bedrooms of the building. He finds several women
handcuffed to beds and Amanda's dead body (apparently dead due to a
drug overdose). Bryan tortures Marko with electricity. After trying to
tough it out, Marko tells Bryan Kim was sold to a man named Saint
Clair. Bryan then turns the power back on and leaves Marko screaming in
agony.
Jean-Claude comes home for supper to discover Bryan is
visiting like an old friend. Jean-Claude's wife, Isabelle, tells
Jean-Claude to put the two kids to bed. As he does, he recovers a
pistol from the lavatory and tucks it into the back of his waistband.
At the dining room table, Bryan casually speaks about moving to Paris
and drops the address of the Albanian pimp-house and Macon's name.
Isabelle naively says that she herself knows Macon. Bryan
then.confronts Jean-Claude on selling protection and anonymity to the
Albanians and demands to know who Saint Clair is. Jean-Claude pulls out
his pistol and aims it at Bryan, angrily detailing the gap between his
pay and his expenses. Bryan then tosses a handful of bullets onto the
dining room table and tells Jean-Claude that he has been behind a desk
too long if he can't tell the difference in weight between a loaded gun
and an unloaded one. Bryan pulls his own pistol and shoots Isabelle in
the arm, saying, it's a flesh wound but that his next shot will kill
her unless Jean-Claude provides him with information on Saint Clair.
Jean-Claude then goes into his office and uses his computer to access
police files that identify and locate Saint Clair. Bryan then tells
Jean-Claude to tell his wife he is sorry for shooting her and he then
pistol whips the Frenchman to the floor.
Again posing as
Jean-Claude, Bryan gains access to a party Saint Clair is hosting.
Bryan discovers Saint Clair is hosting a much darker "party" on a lower
level. Bryan assumes the guise of a waiter and gains access to a
darkened room facing a wall of glass, one of a series of the same types
of rooms that encircle an open stage. On the stage are a young,
drugged, scantily clad young woman and a handler. In each darkened
cubicle, a bidder presses a red button when they wish to bid. The
auction ends and the girl is led away. The auctioneer announces the
last and best woman of the evening's auction. An American, pure virgin;
it is Kim!! Bryan pulls a gun on the buyer in this darkened room and
forces him to outbid the others to purchase her. The bidding goes to
500,000, but, upon leaving the room with the buyer still at gunpoint,
Bryan is knocked unconscious from behind. He awakens suspended from a
pipe just below the ceiling. He admits to the Englishman, Saint Clair,
that he is the last girl's father. Saint Clair says, "too bad. It's
business and she is sold already." He then orders his henchmen to
execute Bryan quietly and leaves the room. Despite being shackled to
the overhead pipe, Bryan manages to break the pipe loose and escape
while killing the guards. Bryan meets the surprised Saint Clair
standing at the elevator. Saint Clair pleads unsuccessfully for his
life by saying "it was just business" and telling him that Kim will be
at a pier. Bryan shoots him dead and sends the elevator up to the
party. Bryan races to the the river, but misses the large yacht onto
which Kim and other veiled women have been hustled as it cruises down
the river. Bryan drives a stolen car against one-way traffic to gain
position on a bridge, then jumps onto the ship as it passes underneath.
On board, an Arab sheik lies on a bed in a robe as a group of women in
veils are led in. Bryan fights his way through the sheik's guards and
enters the bedroom, the sheik has a curved knife held to Kim's throat.
Bryan takes aim and shoots the man in the head.
Back in the US,
Kim is reunited with her mother. Lenore even hugs Bryan in thanks.
Later, Bryan mysteriously collects Kim and takes her to a very nice
home. After he knocks, he takes a step back. Pop star Sheera opens the
door and, over her shoulder, someone sits at a piano. Sheera takes Kim
by the arm while saying she had heard Kim wants to be a singer, "let's
see what you've got".
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