10 Very Particular Thoughts About Liam Neeson’s ‘Taken’ Speech

The thriller gave us the greatest 40-second action-movie monologue of the 2000s, and maybe ever.

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The 2009 action spectacular Taken didn’t just kickstart a new phase of Liam Neeson’s career. The movie also gave us a speech that we all now pretty much agree is the greatest 40-second action-movie monologue of the 2000s, and possibly of all time. If you’re like me, you’ve watched this clip of Bryan Mills’ phone call with a man who has kidnapped his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), roughly 500 times since the movie came out on January 30, 2009, and you’ve almost certainly heard its most famous line misquoted every other week by various middle-managers in your office. So I’d like to honor the legendary scene’s anniversary by revisiting this unforgettable cinematic moment in the full context it deserves. Here are the 10 things that came to mind as I rewatched Taken today.

He does not say “a special set of skills.”

The entire speech, with the oft-misquoted line helpfully bolded, goes: “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.” But everyone always mangles the “set of skills” part, usually by saying “a special set of skills.” Never say this.

Bryan is not making a threat.

Bryan is merely stating the inevitable repercussions of kidnapping his daughter and offering a deal for her safe return that, in retrospect, after it’s too late for them, and they are merely bloody carcasses with pummeled faces, will look pretty sweet to the bad guys. Bryan is the Chuck Norris meme confirmed.

The phone call is longer than you remember.

Bryan’s epic spiel clocks in at 40 seconds, but it comes at the end of a four-minute conversation with Kim, during which he expresses fatherly concern that she hasn’t followed the conditions she agreed to prior to her trip, like calling him when she lands and not letting her friend Amanda do really, really dumb things, like telling kidnappers where they’re staying and immediately blasting really loud music so that the sum total of her apartment experience is dancing by herself in the living room for multiple minutes before said kidnappers haul her away. So much is conveyed during the derailed phone call between Bryan and Kimmy. In quick succession, we learn that Kimmy realizes that Amanda might be a bad influence, that she understands why she should have listened to her dad, that he has a very cool briefcase filled with spy gear, and that Bryan is absolutely lethal (“They’re going to take you,” he informs his very frightened daughter just before she is taken and the speech begins).