It has been 16 years since Liam Neeson first played Bryan Mills, retired ex-Green Beret and CIA officer, who goes on a one-man vigilante-style, retribution-driven hunt to track down the criminals who kidnapped his daughter. Taken, launched in 2008, has become famous mostly for introducing the world to those intimidating, memorable lines growled by the grizzled Neeson – “what I do have is a particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career; skills which make me a nightmare for people like you.”

Neeson has since gone on to cement his place as an action movie star, basically recycling the same cynical, world-weary and aging veteran military man deployed into action in different environments; on a plane (Nonstop), on a train (The Commuter), an ice-covered roads (The Ice Road), a ski resort (Cold Pursuit).

Ok, Liam, we get it – you are an action movie star.

You know the old saying about life imitating art? Perhaps we can apply the reverse. There is a real life, aging veteran who deployed his particular combination of lethal skill sets to multiple situations and combat zones. No, he did not wear black leather jackets – though he did fight in various weather zones and military forces. Proving his worth as a soldier in the icy conditions of his native country, he went on to fight in the humid, stifling jungles of Vietnam.

Larry Thorne, American Green Berets participant, began his life as Finnish soldier Lauri Törni. The Green Berets, an American Special Forces unit, began in 1952 as the particular brainchild of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA. Undergoing rigorous training in guerrilla warfare, sabotage tactics, surveillance, the recruit has to be equipped with strong physical and mental stamina.

Thorne, as Lauri Törni came to be known in the US, contributed significantly to the training regime of this new unit. He honed his particular unique skill set, not only fighting for Finland, but also as an officer in the Waffen SS during the Second World War.

Let’s elaborate some relevant background here, because in order to understand Thorne and his actions, we have to examine the tensions between Finland and the USSR during the interwar period (1918-39).

Finland was given independence from Imperial Russia in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Lenin and the Communist leadership accepted that non-Russian nationalities should have their independence. The Communist ideology inspired the abortive, short lived Red Finland experiment in 1918. Finnish workers established their own Soviet republic.

That experiment would be mercilessly crushed by an alliance of anticommunist privileged Finns, backed up by German troops. The Finnish ruling class, headed by General Carl Mannerheim, violently suppressed the Finnish workers, assisted in this undertaking by German light infantry, the Jaegers. Ironically, Mannerheim had trained as an officer in Tsarist Russia.

The Finnish civil war established Mannerheim’s reputation as an able military commander, but also demonstrated his willingness to kill his fellow Finns, enabled by outside support. It was not the last time that Germans and Finns would fight together.

Finland had acquired the territory of Karelia, along the Finnish-Soviet border. In 1939, with tensions increasing between Moscow and Berlin, the Kremlin was worried that Finland would be used as a staging post for launching German troops. Leningrad was close to the Finnish border. Moscow was concerned that with Finnish-controlled territory surrounding Leningrad, the latter could easily become encircled.

Mannerheim, understandably, did not want to cede Finnish territory.

The 1939-40 Finnish-Soviet war, popularly known as the Winter War, pitted the smaller and militarily weaker Finland against the might of the Soviet Union. The Finns, and Lauri Törni who was by now an officer, performed admirably, inflicting heavy losses on the Soviets. However, the Finns eventually lost, and had to cede even more territory than the Kremlin demanded prior to the war’s outbreak.

Finland was the underdog to be sure – it is much smaller by geography, population and economic power compared to its eastern neighbour. However, Finland was an underdog with powerful German friends in Europe.

Though Mannerheim insisted that Finland was not an ally of Nazi Germany, his government did everything it could to assist the Wehrmacht in its invasion of the USSR. Finland mined the waters in the USSR’s maritime territory, and allowed German forces to be deployed for an eventual attack on Leningrad from Finland.

Back to Lauri Törni – joining the Waffen SS, he distinguished himself in battle. After the war was over, non-German Nazi collaborators reinvented themselves as simple patriots fighting for the liberation of their respective nations. Just how implementing the Waffen SS programme of racial extermination of Jews, Slavs and ethnic minorities would assist in their emancipatory struggles, is never explained.

Imprisoned for treason by the Finnish authorities after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Lauri Törni escaped and made his way to the United States. There he found a nation not only willing to forget the recent past, but also to forget his service in the criminal and psychopathic Waffen SS organisation.

The Cold War had begun, and Larry Thorne, recent immigrant, could offer a particular set of skills, skills cultivated over a long period of time, skills which made him an invaluable asset for people like the US intelligence establishment.

If you contribute a multiple skill toolkit such as parachuting, skiing, knife-fighting and hand-to-hand combat, then the Green Berets were the outfit best suited to your resume. Unconventional warfare was a crucial part of the Cold War, and fighting in different nations in covert conditions was a must.

Thorne not only trained new recruits, but was himself deployed to Vietnam. He served two tours of duty, earning commendations for his valour. In 1965, at the age of 46, Thorne crashed his military helicopter while on a secret mission to Laos. His remains were located in 1999, and he was interred in the Arlington National Cemetery in 2003.

What does it say about us in the Anglophone West, when we rejected Jewish refugees from Europe during the war, only to provide sanctuary to their murderers and associated Eastern European collaborators after the conflict ended?

And Liam Neeson – you are an amazingly talented actor; enough with the action movies already.