You won't find Garden State on many Best of the Decade lists, and with good reason: Zach Braff's film nearly suffocates you with hipster twee. But, still, has anything been more influential on the latter half of the aughts? Without Garden State, (500) Days of Summer and a host of other 20-something ennui fests wouldn't even exist. Sure, it has become a punch line—and a litmus test; if someone truly loves Garden State, we immediately raise an eyebrow—but it's easy to see why this film struck such a chord initially: it's funny, it has some great music cues and it features Peter Sarsgaard. What more could any indie-lover want? [IFC, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: Planet of the Apes

Flipping around the channels a couple of weeks ago, we stumbled upon Tim Burton's ill-advised remake of Planet of the Apes, and, to our surprise, we were oddly transfixed. Not because this film is any good—spoiler alert: it's not—but because a remake of Planet of the Apes actually happened! We would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the pitch meeting when Mr. Burton sold 20th Century Fox executives on not only Mark "Talks To Christmas Animals" Wahlberg in the Charlton Heston lead role, but also Estella Warren as the female lead (non-ape edition). Say hi to your mother for us. [Cinemax, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Taken

Three reasons to watch Taken, the surprise sleeper hit from this past February: 1.) Liam Neeson, who combines Jason Bourne with the tenacity of a great white shark in the name of saving his daughter from being sold into sex slavery. 2.) The plot, which can literally fit inside a fortune cookie (see: man saving daughter from sex slavery). 3.) Did we mention how much ass Mr. Neeson kicks, all within the safely re-edited confines of a PG-13 rating (Taken was much more violent when it made the rounds through Europe)? Seriously, this movie is a load of fun because it's as simple as a cheeseburger. Just make sure to check cognizant thought at the door. [HBO, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: It's a Wonderful Life

Enough has been written (and re-written) about It's a Wonderful Life, that, at this point, finding some virgin snow to intellectually play around in is borderline impossible. So we'll just say this about our favorite holiday movie: it's so dark and weird and twisted and sad that parts don't feel like a Christmas movie at all. But then the third act happens—replete with Zuzu's petals and "Auld Lang Syne"—and we're a puddle of tears and hope. 63 years later and George Bailey is still the richest man in town. [NBC, 8 p.m.]

Friday: Till Death

Because it isn't officially the holiday until you watch four consecutive episodes of Till Death, Fox is kind enough to air (read: burn off) a marathon of the sit-com on Christmas night. We doubt you'll decide to watch Brad Garrett crack wise about how miserable married life is over putting on the Season Five DVD of Lost Santa Claus brought you, but Till Death is somewhat compelling. Think about it: this is a show that no one watches and yet it still airs. Do you think that worries the cast and crew, or, like so many others, do they just have the "eh, a job is a job" mentality that is so prevalent in America right now? More important, has anyone ever put this much thought into Till Death? Probably not. [Fox, 8 p.m.]

Liam Neeson was up for—but never got to play—James Bond, and now he’s getting even. In the violent, churning and laughably derivative action bruiser Taken, he’s a suave, power-knuckled and once-lethal secret agent named Bryan Mills who, in truth, is just as mean as 007 but maybe slightly more human (he’s an ex-husband, as well as a parent who loves his child unconditionally). And he’s paid a price for his fists. Bryan once devoted so much concentration and energy to his job as a “preventer” (“I prevented bad things from happening”) that his wife (a wasted Famke Janssen, who usually plays these roles herself) left him for a rich California businessman and took their daughter with them. So Bryan retired, moved to Los Angeles to make up for the frayed relationship with his estranged daughter Kim and sacrificed his own career to be near her. All he does now is grill steaks for his buddies and work occasional security jobs like guarding pop stars at rock concerts. But old habits die hard, and Bryan has forgotten none of the special skills he learned from his years with the C.I.A.—a knowledge of weapons, wiretaps, deciphering secret codes, scaling buildings like Batman and wiping out anything that gets in his way without regret—if he suddenly needs them. When his virginal 17-year-old (huh? In L.A.?) embarks with her girlfriend on a whirlwind tour following the rock group U2 across Europe and, within hours of her arrival in Paris, gets kidnapped by Albanian white slavers, Bryan shifts into demolition mode and takes no prisoners. He may be a has-been, but within 96 hours he’s torn down everything in Paris with his bare hands except the Eiffel Tower.

First, he leaves a message on the kidnappers’ cell phone, which just happens to be lying under the bed where his daughter is hiding: “I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.” He does, of course, but not before he slam-dunks his way through the City of Light, turning it into darkness. Equipped with Uzis, knives, swords and even an electric chair, Bryan works without official supervision or an expense account, yet never seems to run out of steam or cash. And there is no limit to his ability to tap international phone lines, spark the ignition in foreign cars without keys and find new ways to torture and kill his victims. In one scene, when he fails to get the right answer from a man strapped to a chair in the middle of a brutal interrogation, he electrocutes him, filling the room with smoke, fire and the smell of burning flesh. Each new victim (including some of France’s leading power players) only piques the simmering rage of a vengeful parent, and we all know that a dangerous secret agent with a mission makes for panic in the streets. Turning the tables on master fiends, police officials and their families, ransacking Paris for clues, Bryan ends up in a shootout on a luxury yacht on the Seine only minutes before Kim is to be raped by an Arab sheik who looks like Jabba the Hutt.

To be generous, it’s far-fetched to a fault. Worse still, it’s all been done before. Moving from the theme of vigilante dad (Death Wish), to the strategies of slave traders who traffic girls into prostitution on Internet auctions (Trade), to the tragic spectacle of a scrupulous outsider who slides down the sinkhole of an alternate underworld universe of crime, decadence and perversion (Paul Schrader’s Hardcore), this hack job has not a shred of originality. Liam Neeson is an unconventional choice to play an action hero. His big, wrinkled smile is at dismaying odds with the lurid mayhem that surrounds him, and how does a brawny American C.I.A. operative account for that lyrical Irish accent? In the end, nobody is called to task for the bodies that litter the streets of Paris, the automobiles and real estate that lie in rubbish left behind or the heroin injections that have mysteriously worn off, leaving Kim heading home to a career as a rock star. Taken is the kind of exploitative junk everyone expects from no-talent French hack Luc Besson, who made the dreadful Transporter films, although this time out he’s only the producer and the co-writer of the moronic script, leaving the ossified direction to Pierre Morel. After this horror, you might think twice about sending a teenager to Paris without a chaperone, but it could be worse. She might end up in a movie like Taken.

rreed@observer.com