In 2008 writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and director Pierre Morel came practically out of nowhere with their action-thriller Taken, starring a 56-year-old Liam Neeson who, thanks to that film, has now been reinvented as a 21st century action star. It made over $200 million worldwide on a budget of $25 million so of course it would be getting the sequel treatment, whether it was really needed or not.
Fans may be hoping for another visceral, no-holds-barred movie but this is another one of those sequels that frankly doesn’t need to exist, a cynical cash-grab that basically just rinses and repeats the same plot again while swapping moral dubiousness for comparatively tame action sequences and disappointing predictability.
While on a working holiday in Istanbul, ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and his former wife (Famke Janssen) are kidnapped by the father of one of the men he killed while rescuing his daughter (Maggie Grace) in the first film. That’s a sequel set-up which screams laziness and what follows doesn’t exactly contain any great surprises or memorable action we haven’t seen a thousand times before. Anything worthwhile here – Neeson still impresses in his advanced years as the ex-agent with a very specific set of skills – is essentially wasted.
I had a real problem with the first film because of its morally suspect plot; the minute an innocent American white girl steps one foot outside the US she will get kidnapped by the big bad foreign men who will obviously sell her into the sex trade (note sarcasm). With the age certificate lowered from 15 to 12A there’s none of that griminess to be found here, however what’s put in its place isn’t much better, with second-rate Bourne style fight scenes in which edits and removal of explicit sound effects are painfully obvious. Whatever the first one had that soured the proceedings at least it had balls – the sequel has been neutered.
Taking the helm from Pierre Morel is Olivier Megaton (no, that’s not his real name before you ask), who previously made the likes of Transporter 3 and Colombiana. His direction here is bland and uninteresting, with annoying shaky cam and mega close-ups masquerading as good action, though a lackadaisical script doesn’t exactly help matters. Over-the-top scenes of father and daughter working together to save the day (she’s learned a thing or two from being kidnapped last time, you see), one in particular involving the comic chucking of grenades in a crowded city, are just plain daft.
To make matters worse we have a bunch of nameless baddies which Neeson has to punch, stab and shoot his way through, headed by go-to foreign baddie actor Rade Serbedzija as a father hell-bent on exacting revenge on Bryan for the way he ruthlessly killed his son. The movie clumsily sidesteps the obvious issue that the son deserved what he got. Those bad guys, they just won’t listen, will they?
This is a prime example of a sequel churned out for the sake of it, to capitalize on the success of the first film with no real verve or originality to the plot or action scenes. Taken 2 is nothing more than a watered down version of something that previously went all out.
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Taken 2 is out in UK cinemas on October 4th.