Liam Neeson

No responsible Dad wants his 17-year-old daughter jetting off to Europe in the company of a party-hardy girlfriend, under the care of dubious - and perhaps nonexistent - chaperones. But when Dad is an ex-CIA agent and his little girl is abducted within hours of touching down in Paris, it's time for some serious parental intervention. And so, with a 96-hour window before Kim (Maggie Grace) disappears forever into a sordid underworld of Albanian sex traffickers, Bryan Mills - Liam Neeson, making a surprisingly good action hero - flies from the City of Angels to the City of Light to track his offspring.

"Unknown" rips off a bunch of movies, but not the movie it wants you to think it's ripping off, which is "Taken. " "Unknown" stars Liam Neeson, who's shown in the trailer and TV ads making an angry face and promising to avenge his family - more or less like the guy he played in the sleeper hit "Taken. " That movie, though, was a bristling, sadistic revenge actioner, and "Unknown" is a plodding, unoriginal thriller, with Neeson stumbling around as the confused victim. And he's not a CIA man, he's a botanist - Martin Harris, in Berlin with his wife (January Jones)

Movies and TV shows in development: Neeson may play survivor Liam Neeson is in negotiations to reteam with director Joe Carnahan ("The A Team") for the survival drama "The Grey. " Neeson steps into the shoes of Bradley Cooper , who was slated to topline the project when it was first unveiled earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival. Co-written by Carnahan and Ian Jeffers , the story begins after a plane goes down in Alaska. Neeson and his oil-drilling team find themselves struggling to survive in the wild.

It has not been the best of summers for Liam Neeson. First he was Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn facing the sometimes insurmountable challenges of George Lucas' plodding dialogue in The Phantom Menace, and now he is Dr. David Marrow confronting menacing phantoms in The Haunting. As the initially fearless research scientist, Neeson has to negotiate such sprightly ghostwritten lines as, "The only problem with fear is that it has become largely inappropriate," and "You're participating in a study in group hysteria!"

GIMME FIVE "Chloe" star Liam Neeson's new career strategy: Just don't say no. He's had five releases in the last eight months. 1. "The A-Team. " Based on the hit 1980s TV show, Neeson is the commander of a group of Iraq war vets trying to clear their name after a mission goes bad. 2. "Chloe. " He's married to Julianne Moore, who hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him. 3. "After.Life. " As a funeral director, Neeson attempts to help Christina Ricci transition from one world to another.

The title character in "Ethan Frome" is a brooding, crippled man who lives in an isolated shack in wintry New England with a shrewish, invalid wife who thinks the most important thing in her life is a glass dish. Intrigued by the cinematic possibilities, The American Playhouse two years ago launched an on-location production with strong, silent Irish hunk Liam Neeson in the lead role. The finished product spent the intervening months on the shelf because some sensible person saw it and wondered why people would pay money to watch a crippled man drag his leg through the snow for two hours.

"Rob Roy" is a historical epic that raises an important question. What is a Rob Roy? The Bartender's Guide lists it as scotch, sweet vermouth, a dash of bitters and a maraschino cherry, served over ice. You'll want to bring a thermos full if you're going to make it all the way through "Rob Roy," a dour, drearily reverential story about Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson), an 18th-century Highland Scot whose commitment to clan honor leads him into bloody conflict with British aristocracy.

Few filmmakers have the gift of Atom Egoyan, the Canadian director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, of establishing a mood so supercharged that your internals combust. Chloe, Egoyan's stylish erotic thriller, stars Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson as Catherine and David, a successful Toronto couple whose 25-year marriage lacks, as they say, passion. Catherine, a gynecologist whose swank clinic resembles a spa and who speaks of sexual ecstasy as an engineer might describe fluid mechanics, suspects that David, her musicologist spouse, is cheating.

A boxer in training for the big bout pants his way up a lonely country road as his anxious handlers trail in a cortege of cars. At a casual glance, we seem to be yet again on the Rocky road with a hero destined to overcome insuperable odds on his way to final victory. But Crossing the Line takes a different route. The sport of choice is bare- knuckle boxing, an illegal and brutal pursuit with a loyal and bloodthirsty following among the working classes in Scotland's grimy cities.

"Unknown" rips off a bunch of movies, but not the movie it wants you to think it's ripping off, which is "Taken. " "Unknown" stars Liam Neeson, who's shown in the trailer and TV ads making an angry face and promising to avenge his family - more or less like the guy he played in the sleeper hit "Taken. " That movie, though, was a bristling, sadistic revenge actioner, and "Unknown" is a plodding, unoriginal thriller, with Neeson stumbling around as the confused victim. And he's not a CIA man, he's a botanist - Martin Harris, in Berlin with his wife (January Jones)

Movies and TV shows in development: Neeson may play survivor Liam Neeson is in negotiations to reteam with director Joe Carnahan ("The A Team") for the survival drama "The Grey. " Neeson steps into the shoes of Bradley Cooper , who was slated to topline the project when it was first unveiled earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival. Co-written by Carnahan and Ian Jeffers , the story begins after a plane goes down in Alaska. Neeson and his oil-drilling team find themselves struggling to survive in the wild.

GIMME FIVE "Chloe" star Liam Neeson's new career strategy: Just don't say no. He's had five releases in the last eight months. 1. "The A-Team. " Based on the hit 1980s TV show, Neeson is the commander of a group of Iraq war vets trying to clear their name after a mission goes bad. 2. "Chloe. " He's married to Julianne Moore, who hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him. 3. "After.Life. " As a funeral director, Neeson attempts to help Christina Ricci transition from one world to another.

The most testosterone-y thing "The A-Team" does isn't blowing up a million cars, a dozen planes, a chopper, a tank, a tanker or the port of Los Angeles. No, it's having the entire violent pile of blood and mayhem endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi. Now that takes cojones. When one of the A-Team decides to become a pacifist, like Jules at the end of "Pulp Fiction," team leader Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson) dredges up a quote from Gandhi to persuade him to again take up the sword.

The most testosterone-y thing "The A-Team" does isn't blowing up a million cars, a dozen planes, a chopper, a tank, a tanker or the port of Los Angeles. No, it's having the entire violent pile of blood and mayhem endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi. Now that takes cojones. When one of the A-Team decides to become a pacifist, like Jules at the end of "Pulp Fiction," team leader Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson) dredges up a quote from Gandhi to persuade him to again take up the sword.

IN THE NEW British indie "Harry Brown," Michael Caine summons his inner "Gran Torino" to portray a senior vigilante. Ironically, the film was shot in the poor area where Caine grew up - there's a plaque there commemorating his getting out and making good. The veteran actor spoke to Tattle about "Harry Brown" (review on Page 39) at last September's Toronto International Film Festival and said the primary differences from his childhood and now are that drugs have replaced alcohol and weapons have replaced fists.

Few filmmakers have the gift of Atom Egoyan, the Canadian director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, of establishing a mood so supercharged that your internals combust. Chloe, Egoyan's stylish erotic thriller, stars Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson as Catherine and David, a successful Toronto couple whose 25-year marriage lacks, as they say, passion. Catherine, a gynecologist whose swank clinic resembles a spa and who speaks of sexual ecstasy as an engineer might describe fluid mechanics, suspects that David, her musicologist spouse, is cheating.

A week ago, Natasha Richardson was flirting around the edges of fame. For most, her name elicited a vague "Yeah, seems familiar," but then they couldn't quite place her. Her photograph might have recalled any beautiful, if icy, blond actress of a certain pedigree. Today, she is everywoman - wife, mother, sister, daughter. Dead at 45 in the most capricious of ways. She was not hot-dogging down a triple-black-diamond slope when death tapped her on the shoulder. No, she was on the bunny hill, on a spring-break trip with one of her two sons.