OK, so maybe Taken wasn’t the best action movie of all time; I mean, when you think about it, was pretty dumb, oddly basic and strangely racist numerous times during its blunt running time. However, the sight of Liam Neeson making a determined grab at the action hero baton with such gusto not only was a genuinely stirring sight to see but we also got to see him deliver one of the all time great cinematic threats that’s ever been gutturally uttered by an action hero. However, the world certainly took to the sight of Neeson’s OCD avenging angel murdering his way across Paris in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter and so the only thing more inevitable than Liam snapping the neck of a sex trafficker is a sequel dutifully popping up a couple of years later.
Regrettably not titled Two-ken (presumably because it would have sounded like a tropical bird – but what do I know?), Taken 2 tried to keep the theme going by flipping the script on the whole taken thing, but would this minor change justify a whole new movie?
In the aftermath of ex-service agent Bryan Mills tearing a sex slave ring a new asshole, the families of the criminals that he decimated in order to get his daughter back have vowed to get revenge on the man that has caused this outrage. While that doesn’t sound particularly threatening, you have to remember that said families belong to the Albanian mafia and are being led by freelance terrorist Murad Hoxha whose son met a particularly vicious end and the hands of a vengful Mills.
However, back in the States, Mills is blissfully unaware of this while he continues to approach his life with that obsessive compulsive streak that is still being continuously triggered by such things as his daughter, Kim, skips out on her driving lessons in order to meet with her new secret boyfriend. Of course, while this sets off multiple alarms in a guy who is hyper vigilant even when he isn’t trying to murder those who have wronged him, but he gets a sliver of hope when his ex-wife Eleanor reaches out to him in the wake of her most recent marriage hitting the rocks.
In an effort to bring his family back together, he invites Lenore and Kim to join him in Istanbul after a private security job wraps up, but unfortunately that gives Hoxha the opening he needs to spring his trap and before you know it, someone else has been taken.
But hold the phone, where before it was Kim who was whisked away by malevolent criminals, this she’s the only one who doesn’t get grabbed and it’s actually Bryan and Lenore who are bundled away for some horrible fate. Of course, thanks to those particular set of skills that Mills famously bragged about back in 2008, he’s turns out to be notoriously difficult to keep contained, but even with Kim aiding him from the outside, can he manage to save his ex-wife from the men who wish to extract revenge from her hide?
The image of a weathered Liam Neeson laying solid beatdowns upon various badnicks is as an indelible image of 2000s action cinema as any other, so we shouldn’t be too stunned that producer/writer Luc Besson decided to bring big bad Bryan back for another round of kidnap equals bitch slap. However, when you consider that the original had a plot that could fit smugly onto a postage stamp with ample elbow room to spare, it seems that Taken 2 had nowhere else to go except to invert its primary premise and simply reverse the basic concept.
The idea that the villains are now the grieving, mobbed-up relatives of the original bad guys may not do much to diffuse the more racially iffy aspects of the first movie, but it does make thematic sense to throw a different type of vengeful father at Neeson’s neck snapping patriarch. Also fitting in rather well is the idea that the first film’s damsel in distress, Maggie Grace’s devastatingly naïve Kim, is now actively involved in trying to aid her father’s escape almost is if it’s some sort of bring your daughter to merc day. Anyone who even knows the basics of slightly shifting the rules of a movie in order to crack the story for a sequel would no doubt agree that this rather simple reversal is a fine and solid technique to give you the bare bones of your plot, however Taken 2 soon runs into problems when you realise that other than pulling an Uno reverse card on the plot particulars, the movie doesn’t have any real ideas to add to the film beyond that and simply chooses to go through the motions.
Now, while I realise that a good action film doesn’t necessarily need a whole lot of bulk to be effective (both Predator and Terminator for example are as lean as fuck), but Taken 2 turns out to be so devoid of substance that it feels like every single person involved with the film, right down to the crafts and services, are just phoning this shit in with reckless abandon. For a start, we all know that Neeson can do that growly, menacing thing in his fucking sleep (and the way his OCD is portrayed still weirdly makes him seem like a bit of a dick when he insists at waxing his own car at a car wash), however, it seems that his fighting skills are fetching a much needed nap too. Now I’m not suggesting that Neeson needs to be flying around in a wire-fu harness and engaging in long, edit-free brawls like he’s in Oldboy, but the fact that none of his fight scenes seem to last longer than two moves before we cut to another angle, and then another, and then another just turns any and all fight choreography into confusing mush and at times and brutal, neck snapping fatality merely looks like he’s hugging his enemies to death. Additionally, despite his foes being headed up by Snatch’s Rade Šerbedžija, Taken 2’s batch if villains are somehow more nondescript and forgettable than the first film’s meaning that there’s virtually no drama or even much excitement when Mills wades through them like he’s in the training level of a scrolling beat-em up and the blandness manages to spread to an utterly wasted Famke Janssen who is either required to suddenly fawn over her ex-hubby despite being something of a ball breaker on the last film – or worse yet, play a snivelling victim who is slowing bleeding to death with a bag on her head.
Bizarrely, Maggie Grace is the only character who even gets the slightest of upgrades despite mostly being laden with subplot that requires her to pass her driving test. However, even though she gets to get in a little bit on the action this time out, some of the things she is required to do end up being unintentionally hilarious such as being directed to hurl grenades into downtown Istanbul so her father can figure out his location from the booms or suddenly be required to drive like Gene Hackman in The French Connection in order to get to safe ground.
Lazy, bland and ultimately devoid of any of the first film’s ballsy scrappiness, Taken 2 ends up being the worse kind of workaday action sequel that tries to coast on its main actors grizzled performance when his editing-powered fighting skills now seem as uneven as his legendarily wonky American accent.
A movie that makes Liam Neeson killing terrorist boring? Take me away, please.
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