Does Bryan Mills just make a massively lucky guess that Marko's gang had an arrangement with the authorities?
In Taken, just after Bryan Mills tells Jean-Claude ("Deputy director, Internal Security") that he's not going to give up and go home, he learns from the girl he rescued from the construction site that a place of interest is behind a red door on Rue de Paradis.
He goes there and immediately inveigles himself all the way to the room where all the bosses are sitting, by suggesting that he is a representative of the authorities that they are paying to allow their activities to continue relatively unhindered.
He then proceeds to identify the person he had spoken to on the phone at the point of abduction, and wreak some havoc.
My question is, how on earth did he know that such a ploy would work? There is nothing I can see in his previous (two, short) conversations with Jean-Claude to suggest that this is happening (I found a badly-formatted but apparently faithful script online). Are we to suppose that his experience led him to realise that such an operation would require complicity? Or is there a deleted scene that shows how this became clear?
Best Answer
I think gabe3886 nailed it in his comment:
Part of his idea is going to come from his long career where he's gathered his skills. He knows how dark and dangerous the world can be (which forms part of the concern about letting Kim go to Paris). Also the "past services rendered" part could mean anything, but could be taken to mean that he's helped infiltrate similar organisations so the crime level can be controlled to make Paris more attractive to visitors.
The fact that Sam could find out about the Albanians, would mean that the French Government would be aware of the "house with the red door." Jean-Claude already knows there are Albanians in Paris. Bryan knows from his career that such an arrangement wouldn't work without bribing a high-level official of rank comparable to Jean-Claude. So he pretty much knew they bribed someone, he only needed to find out who. And then he used this information against Jean-Claude himself.
Pictures about "Does Bryan Mills just make a massively lucky guess that Marko's gang had an arrangement with the authorities?"
TAKEN 3 | Bryan Mills Briefing Featurette [HD]
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Ray Piedra, Leah Kelley, Sudipta Mondal, Polina Kovaleva