Taken is a film series, the first of which was released in 2008. The story revolved around a father who is was experienced in the field of private security trying to reach and rescue her daughter. The main conflict was that her daughter was abducted by human traffickers, particularly sex slavers when she and her friends were on a short overseas trip. She was about to be auctioned off by the slavers to high profile clients and so the protagonist had to save her before that happens. That is a technically correct portrayal of human trafficking, which based on the United States’ definition, can be defined as the “recruitment, transport, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion” . Although the film correctly portrayed human trafficking, it does not fully align with the reality about it. The first example on how this was the case with how the protagonist handled the case is that the U.S. authorities would not have allowed him to privately pursue a large group of sex slavers all by him in a foreign territory as that would have foreign relations repercussions. It would have been more believable had he been escorted by federal authorities while he was on the process of pursuing her daughter. Another example on how unaligned from human trafficking reality that move was is the fact that sex slavers usually do not sell a single person for such a high price. The market price for the humans in human trafficking camps tend to be much lower compared to how it was portrayed in the films Taken plus in its two sequels. This may have been done to romanticize the film but it certainly does not fit into the reality of human trafficking.
Works Cited
Kinja, A. "Taken and Human Trafficking." Powder Room (2014): Web. http://powderroom.kinja.com/taken-and-human-trafficking-1675839988. 14 July 16.
