Director Pierre Morel’s “Taken” was a surprise hit in 2008, and it helped turn Liam Neeson into a full-fledged action star. In the film, Neeson introduced us to Bryan Mills, a former CIA operative with an uncanny aptitude for finding and dispatching bad guys. After learning that his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), fell victim to a human-trafficking ring, Bryan travelled to Europe and put his skills to work, eventually recovering her. 

Continuing the tradition of films that capture the magic and mystery of the Eternal City, the most famous of which are Federico Fellini’s“Roma” (1972), William Wyler’s “Roman Holiday” (1953) and Roberto Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City” (1945), Woody Allen’s new film, “To Rome with Love,” is his own portrait of of Rome. In an ode to the Italian capital as well as to Italian cinema, Allen adopts a structure more similar to that of Fellini in “Roma” with a series of loosely connected episodes. Through these stories, Allen pays homage to the city’s beauty, energy and its knack for absurd situations