Taken 2
The original Taken
was one of 2008's best movies, directed by Pierre Morel and written by Luc
Besson with Robert Mark Kamen. This sequel is also written by Besson, but is
written by Olivier Megaton, also with Kamen. The first was relatively realistic.
In the first Liam Neeson's
daughter was taken in Paris and Neeson spent the entire film finding her and
telling her abductors. In this sequel Neeson and his wife (Famke Janssen) are
taken in Istanbul and the rest of the film is Neeson escaping and killing his
abductors.
This one, while tense, is
loaded with some pretty silly things. I don't know which is the silliest, so
I'll just list a couple of them. Neeson uses a handgun that he must've found in
the Republic Pictures prop room because it never needs loading. Liam just shoots
and shoots and shoots and the bullets keep coming. I haven't seen a gun like
that since Gene Autry and Roy Rogers stopped riding the range.
The second one is Neeson's
remarkable ability to find a needle in a haystack. The way he figures out where
he is located after he and his wife are abducted and blindfolded is, indeed,
ingenious. However, when he starts going to look for his wife credulity is
strained to the breaking point.
Maybe the weakest part of
the film is that the bad guys just aren't that hateful. They are led by the
father of the men killed by Neeson in Taken, but the leader, being the
father of a slain son, is basically just a loving father bent on revenge, even
if his son had been a monster. His henchmen are basically nameless and faceless
people whose only purpose is to be slain by Neeson.
Because of the bad
word-of-mouth, and because I did not see it in a screening, I was not expecting
much here. So I was pleasantly surprised when I spent a relatively entertaining
hour and a half. The cinematography (Michael Abramowicz) of Istanbul is
particularly rewarding, and the actors (especially Maggie Grace who reprises her
role as Neeson's daughter) all give fine performances.
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