Many of the sequences could've been intense if the viewer could decipher any of it from the mess of confusing edits. New director Olivier Megaton, the man behind "Transporter 3" and "Colombiana," may have a last name for action, but he doesn't have much of an eye for it. When the action does kick in, it's a disappointment.
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The hope is to make us care about the family, but the clunky dialogue – combined with the fact that Grace wasn't passing for a teenager in the last film, much less this one three years later – makes it a long slog to get to the action. Changing the topic from dreams of pop stardom to fears of parallel parking hasn't made the scenes less dull. Returning writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, apparently misinterpreting everyone's complaints from the previous film, decide the sequel needs even more time spent with the family's tedious bickering back home.
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Sure, audiences still have Neeson, but nothing's been added to the formula save for more ridiculousness, and everything that was bad in the first installment has just gotten worse. The sequel leans hard on the hope that'll be enough again on the second go-around. However, director Pierre Morel's film rode Neeson's gritty charisma and its relatable tourism terror plot to a $100 million box office total. The Euro-produced thriller was already released in theaters in Europe for almost a year before it was brought across the pond, chopped up for a PG-13 rating and dumped into theaters during the desolate cinematic wasteland otherwise known as January. The success of the original "Taken" is still baffling. No, he wants the whole Mills trio, seemingly forgetting Bryan's certain set of skills that make him very good at finding and killing kidnappers. He's now seeking revenge, and he doesn't just want Kim. Unfortunately, it seems the Albanians haven't been as forgetful, namely an elderly gentleman (Rade Serbedzija) whose son was one of the many gunned down by Mills in the last movie.
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He's also still separated from his wife (Famke Janssen), but her current husband is becoming more distant – so distant, in fact, that he's never seen –opening the door for their old flame to light back up.Īfter a family trip to China with the new husband gets nixed, Bryan decides that the girls could join him on a trip to Istanbul, seemingly forgetting his notoriously violent past with folks from Eastern Europe.
#TAKEN 2 MOVIE COMPLETE LICENSE#
He's still ridiculously protective of Kim, his teenage daughter (Maggie Grace, not particularly convincing as a 29-year-old teenager), who is still attempting to get her driver's license and has a new boyfriend she's not too keen to tell ex-CIA dad about. Yes, all of these fake titles sound hilariously absurd, but they would all be more fitting for the supremely silly sequel to Liam Neeson's 2009 surprise hit.Ī few years after the events of the first film, life is back to normal for the one-man Albanian genocide known as Bryan Mills (Neeson). "Taken 2 the Streets" and "Taken 2 the Limit" were good candidates a colleague of mine also recommended "Taken 2: Electric Boogaloo." For the past few weeks, I've been coming up ways of making the title "Taken 2" sound ridiculous.