Taken 2 (2012)

Taken 2 is pretty much Taken 1 but they have slightly changed the rules and had Mom and Dad taken instead of the idiotic daughter. The story sees the father of some of the people killed in the first movie take revenge on Neeson who is working on a protection job in Turkey. The family dynamic hasn’t really moved on since the last movie and through some contrived circumstances both the mom and daughter join Liam Neeson but that’s when it all goes wrong and actually the movie starts to pick up.

First of all it’s not as rough around the edges and dark in tone than the first one. There were some quite ludicrous moments in this film, too many to mention. However the first one that comes to mind is Maggie Grace’s character throwing a grenade from her hotel room and managing to get it underneath a car in a multi-storey car park which must have been some considerable distance. Then there is the fact that she continues to throw more grenades. There is also the moment where Liam Neeson and Grace drive a taxi through a US Embassy (which just happens to appear on an English speaking Sat Nav) and have a minute long conversation without so much as an armed guard doing anything.

Quite what Famke Jenson is doing in this movie is a mystery. She has essentially got paid for smiling for the first third of the movie and then pretending to be asleep for the rest of it. Liam Neeson is very good as usual. It’s quite amazing how he has suddenly become attached to the hardman image. He would be the last person I would have cast in the first movie but he somehow makes it work and even though the movie is a bit watered down compared the previous movie it doesn’t mean that Neeson’s performance has been watered down. Maggie Grace isn’t taken so she has more to do and isn’t as annoying as she was in the previous movie.

That said, Taken 2 isn’t rubbish. There are certainly some enjoyable moments but you do have to suspend your disbelief and send it home without pay for at least a fortnight because otherwise you can pick holes the size of Turkey in the story but I wonder what the plot will be if there is a Taken 3. Maybe Neeson gets taken and it’s down to mom and daughter to rescue him. Maybe.