I fell in love with action movies thanks to this Liam Neeson movie, and now it's free with Hulu

Growing up, I was strangely never all that into action movies. In childhood, I tended to gravitate toward comedy, fantasy, and lighter horror nurtured by a love for shows like Goosebumps. That being said, I remember with crystal clarity the film that changed all of that in my early teenage years, morphing me into an instant convert to the action genre and sending me on a long trail of cinematic discovery. The sequel is a step-down but a personal guilty pleasure, so I know what I’ll be doing tonight…

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Taken with Liam Neeson streaming on Hulu

The 2008 action movie Taken and its 2012 sequel Taken 2 were added to Hulu on Friday, March 15th 2024, inviting you to start the weekend at home the right way. The third and final movie, 2014’s Taken 3, is also on Hulu if you add CINEMAX.

Infusing B-movie elements into a slick, action-packed thriller, the first Taken stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA officer now working as a security guard. When his daughter Kim asks him if she can travel to France, he refuses to give permission. However, she heads out to follow the band U2 on tour regardless. Tragically, she and her friend Amanda are targeted by human traffickers and abducted. Speaking into his daughter’s phone at the time of her kidnapping, Bryan promises the man on the other end of the line that he’ll do anything to get her back.

“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…” The monologue is now downright iconic. At the time, all I knew was Liam was badass, but later on in life, I discovered this was the role that completely redefined the Irish actor as a leading man for the action genre.

The part led to roles in other actioners like A Walk Among The Tombstones, Unknown, The Commuter, Memory, Blacklight—on and on it goes.

At the time, they weren’t available to check out. Instead, being blown away by Taken led me to right a wrong and dive deeper into the action genre after years of ignorantly neglecting it as a kid. As I say, it really turned a corner in getting me into it, so it was only after Taken that I watched the Terminator movies for the first time, Rambo, and John Woo movies like Hard Boiled and Bullet In The Head… So, I guess two people turned into action guys thanks to Taken.

My favorite action movies of the last 10 years

To make it a little fairer, I’ll only be including one movie from a franchise in my list of 10 favorite action movies over the last decade (2014 – now qualifies), otherwise John Wick and Ethan Hunt would get a little too much limelight when staying in the shadows is sometimes part of the job.

So, here are some recent action films I can’t recommend enough, along with where they’re streaming:

Taken 1 and 2 now streaming on Hulu.