Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, who are basically their own French/American buddy cop film and trade jabs at each other as often as they collaborate on scripts, wrote Taken as part of a bread-and-butter of lower budget action films meant to prop up Besson's production company. Its success was just as surprising to Liam Neeson, who took the part primarily to take a vacation in France and have fun with the stunt guys, and thought his iconic speech was corny. Liam would later menace Maggie Grace's ex-boyfriend in-character with a version of the speech. There was also a guy who claimed to have inspired the part, who was later arrested by the FBI.

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