Movie Review: Taken 2 (2012)
October 21, 2012 in Movie Reviews, Reviews
The moral of the story is simple: don’t f*&% with Liam Neeson.
After getting a thorough ass-whooping in the first film, which I declared was one of the best action films of the past decade, those pesky Albanians did not learn their lesson. The father of one of the human traffickers wanted revenge, and he was going to make Bryan Mills pay with a lot more inept henchmen. Bad idea.
I may sound like I’m teasing, but I actually enjoyed Taken 2 a lot. It was impossible to live up to the original anyway, which surprised just about everyone with its brutal efficiency and the total badassness of Neeson’s Mills, a former CIA operative who can kill you in just about every way imaginable. True, Taken 2 is a lazy and completely unnecessary sequel that is even more far-fetched than the original, and let’s face it, was made with only $$$ in mind, but it still manages to thrill by re-captivating some of the magic of the original.
The premise ofTaken 2 is about as unimaginative as it gets: the father of the dude whom Mills electrocuted in the first film in Paris promises to avenge his son’s death. Mills is in Istanbul for freelance security work and is visited by his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) — who is conveniently having “problems” with her second husband — and their daughter (Maggie Grace, who is surprisingly convincing as someone young enough to be going for her driver’s licence). Nasty henchmen try to “take” them all (and succeeds with two of them, hence Taken “2″ — get it?), unleashing the killing machine in Mills once again.
Taken 2 steals shamelessly from its predecessor without really attempting to do anything new or different. Liam Neeson shows off some incredible secret agent brains in addition to killing enemies with guns, melee weapons and his bare hands, and Maggie Grace has a much larger role, but that’s about it. Director Olivier Megaton (surely that cannot be a real name), whose previous efforts include Columbiana and Transporter 3, replaces Pierre Morel, but I didn’t really feel that much of a difference in style. There are gun fights, hand-to-hand combat and car chases galore, all of it happening at break-neck speed after the predictable initial set-up.
The script, written again by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, is lazy — there’s no way to deny that. It assumes we know what Bryan Mills is and what he and has family have been through, and character development is essentially provided through flashbacks to the first film. The bad guy is pretty pathetic and is driven only by revenge, but at the same time he has some strange reasons for not wanting to kill Mills when given the opportunity. The Albanians also sometimes speak to each other in what I presume is Albanian, and at other times in English with Eastern European accents — none of it makes much sense.
But on the other hand, there’s nothing quite like watching the captivating Neeson — who is 60 years old in real life, by the way — run around beating up and killing a whole bunch of bad guys. It’s brainless entertainment but it’s fun and exciting while it lasts.
In other words, if you enjoyed Taken, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy parts, or at least elements, of Taken 2. It’s no secret that the film was cashing in on the success of the original, which is vastly superior in every way, but watching Liam Neeson go on a rampage for an action-packed 91 minutes is still preferable to the majority of action films these days.
3.5 stars out of 5!
PS: If there is going to be a third film, which is highly possible given the loose ends in the script, I’ll definitely be watching.
