"Taken 2" Review

From the outside looking in, Taken 2 is everything that's wrong with Hollywood. I've even heard stories of star Liam Neeson almost backing out of negotiations, questioning why a second film even needed to be made. He's right for thinking this way. At the end of Taken, the story seems pretty well-concluded with no setup for future sequels.
After finally seeing Taken 2, I've decided Neeson and I were both right. This is an unnecessary sequel that's nothing more than a ploy to make a few extra bucks at the box office, cashing in on once-successful properties. The film brings nothing new to the table, just a re-hash of the same thrills from its 2009 predecessor starring Liam Neeson as the butt-kicking, name-taking dad of the year.

While Taken told the thrilling story of one man's daring crusade to rescue his kidnapped daughter from traffickers in Paris, the sequel follows our hero Bryan Mills (Neeson) and his family (Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace) on a trip to Istanbul, where they are targeted by the father of one of the deceased from the first film (Rade Serbedzija). Except this time, its BRYAN who's kidnapped along with his wife Lenore (Janssen), leaving daughter Kim (Grace) to fend for herself until Bryan can catch up with her. Once she's safe, Neeson switches roles from daddy to ex-husband of the year, as he goes on a solo tear for only the film's last half hour trying to get his wife back.

Much of the action is edited in such a frenetic way, it's difficult to see Neeson kicking butt and even harder to tell what exactly is going on. Taken 2 also features a script with so many plot holes, it might as well be inscribed on Swiss cheese. One of them is the set-up at the beginning for the film's villain (Serbedzija), who turns out to be incredibly weak. In the prologue, he swears to get revenge on Mills for causing so much pain and sorrow in his Albanian village after killing the town's sons, husbands, and brothers in Taken. So the plan is to round up more of Tropoja's sons, husbands, and brothers for the slaughter? I mean, does this guy honestly think he's going to succeed against a trained killer with everything to lose? You'd think the lesson would've been learned after the first film. It's a flimsy excuse to line up more bad guys for Neeson to beat up, which is, according to the studio, "what the people want". Too bad they were so preoccupied with making the action bigger that they forgot to develop the characters or any semblance of a decent story.

Another thing that earns Taken 2 a resounding "Ehh" from me is that there's nothing new to see here. What made the first movie so great was that, for the first time, we got to see a man who's trying to live a quiet, retired life be called into action when he's suddenly faced with a parent's worst nightmare. Taken soared thanks to Liam Neeson's brooding performance, and it was this performance that made the bad-ass action so much fun to watch. The sequel just has more of the exact same. No surprises, no twists, just a display of the same chases, gunplay, and fist fights that we've all seen before.
Now there are promising elements in Taken 2 that could've made it great, but they end up squandered. These include the villain, as well as the relationship between Bryan and Lenore which appears to be smoothing out. Certainly Taken 3 will give us some sort of closure there. That's not to say a third film is necessary, but at this point, why stop now? The franchise is a cash cow, raking in a combined total of just under $600 million at the worldwide box office, according to IMDb estimates. I anticipate more of the same fluff that Taken 2 has provided: a classic ploy to wring box office value dry with more of the blockbuster escapism that audiences crave and little focus on solid scripting.

2 OF 4 STARS

(Some of the references to the first film are actually quite clever. If a sequel to Taken really had to be made, this would be the way to try and do it. Sadly, it falls short.)