Taken

Drama, Science Fiction

Julie Benz	Kate Keys/Walker
Emily Bergl	Lisa Clarke
Steve Burton	Captain Russell Keys
Eric Close	John
Catherine Dent	Sally Clarke
Heather Donahue	Mary Crawford
Chad Donella	Jacob Clarke
Julie Ann Emery	Amelia Keys
Dakota Fanning	Allison Clarke
Matt Frewer	Dr. Chet Wakeman
Jason Gray-Stanford
Tina Holmes
Michael Moriarty

Director	Thomas J. Wright; Breck Eisner; Jeremy Kagan
Producer	Richard Heus; Renaud Mathieu
Writer	Leslie Bohem; Pierre Lapointe
Cinematography	Jonathan Freeman; Joel Ransom
Musician	Laura Karpman

Steven Spielberg's alien abduction opus Taken is what happens when you cross-breed Close Encounters of the Third Kind with The Waltons. Obviously flushed with the success of the TV mini-series Band of Brothers, Spielberg's Dreamworks studio has created an equally epic 10-part story chronicling 50 years of habitual abduction over several generations of three American families.

Beginning with the most notorious alien cover-up in US history, the 1947 "crash" at Roswell, New Mexico, Taken introduces the "Greys" and the families they routinely abduct, probe and, in a couple of cases, impregnate over the course of the ten hour-and-a-half-long episodes. The three families are: the Keys, from which first Russell, then his son Jessie, then grandson Danny, are all abducted; the Clarkes, who are descended from a liaison between lonely put-upon housewife Sally Clarke and one of the Roswell crash survivors; and the Crawfords, the ruthless G-men who are committed to uncovering the purpose behind the alien visitations at any cost.

But even though the Greys' actions are at best ambiguous and at worst hostile, Taken is basically a soap opera, lacking the sinister undercurrent of either Dark Skies or The X-Files despite its science-fiction trappings. Nevertheless, this is an engaging series which has decent performances--most notably Joel Gretsch as psychotic Owen Crawford--special effects and an engaging enough storyline to make it entertaining, if somewhat disposable, TV. --Kristen Bowditch