The old man (Rade Serbedzija) is standing
over a series of graves, with grieving people all around,
lamenting the fact that brothers, husbands, fathers and sons
have all been killed by one man and this one man will be
brought to Albania and brought to justice. Now
personally, if I was one of those grievers, I'd ask the old
man… 'Waitaminute…if I'm not mistaken, this cat came into our
house which was heavily fortified, armed with basically only a
gun and his fists and kills up everybody… and now you want to
make a special trip to find this guy and this time escort him into
our house? That's your plan? Yo dawg… count me
out.' Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), the man with a special
set of skills has returned to recapture someone close to him
that was Taken and more brothers, husbands, fathers and sons
from Albania will be missing from the planet Earth. Bank
on it.
Today Bryan is to be dispatched to Istanbul to help protect
somebody or another for a large sum of money. His
daughter is still recovering from the effects of being
kidnapped, hyped up on heroin and almost sold into slavery
during the last movie, and his wife is considerably less
bitchy this time around since her rich husband is about to
leave her. What would be nice is if Kimmy (Maggie Grace)
and Lenore (Famke Jannsen) came to Istanbul with Bryan to
decompress a little, get away from it all because when Kimmy
goes overseas we know nothing but good times happen.
Also in Istanbul is that old dude we mentioned earlier and
bunch disposable movie Albanians and they have a plan for
Bryan. The plan should be to
spy him from a distance and put a bullet in his head with a
high powered-scoped rifle, but no, the old dude has some Dr.
Evil type elongated torture planned for Bryan and it's just
dumb luck that his ex-wife and child happen to be there as
well so this all should work out swell.
Yeah… right. I mean it was looking
positive for a brief minute for the heavies. The bad
guys have Bryan in a bad spot mainly because the ex-wife
couldn't follow the exacting instructions that would've saved
her ass and to the untrained eye one would think that that's
all she wrote for Bryan and Lenore. Fortunately for
Bryan and Lenore, little Kimmy the twenty nine year old High
School Senior has learned to listen to her old man and what
once was lost… that being a gun… now is found and more
brothers and husbands and sons and fathers are going to be
tracked down and are going to be killed. Over and over
and over again.
'Taken', one of my favorite action movies ever, caught
everybody by surprise when it was released a couple of years
ago, especially Fox Pictures who had no earthly clue that that
French produced action movie would be as successful as it
turned out to be. No clue. What I don't have a
clue about is why I… and others… found 'Taken' so darned
entertaining or why any movie works and some don't. Now
don't get me wrong because 'Taken 2' is entertaining to a
degree, it's just not 'Taken' is all. Maybe it's as
simple as director Pierre Morel, who producer Luc Besson
doesn't put to work nearly enough, being replaced by director
Olivier Megaton who producer Luc Besson probably puts to work
a little too much. Or maybe it's because 'Taken 2' as a
sequel adds nothing… and I mean nothing of any kind of
difference from the first movie, outside of being a little
bigger, louder and a lot stupider.
Bryan has his daughter throwing grenades in Istanbul so he can
get a gage as to where he has been taken. Freaking
grenades. While watching stuff blow up is cool, I'm
thinking at some point Istanbul police should be able to track
down a darn near six foot American teenage girl running
through their town tossing grenades. Then there's the
car chase scene, which while thrilling was kind of funny
listening to Bryan berate his daughter, who failed her driving
test in America, but was coaxed by her old man through the
difficult task of driving a stick through the crowded streets
of Istanbul like an Earnhardt on mescaline. It took me a
week to teach my wife how to drive a stick, with much pain for
the transmission suffered by my old SR5, but this girl was
putting the clutch on the floor, handling the stick and
drifting like she was Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Another
issue is that there is almost no suspense in this movie.
Sure, we know Bryan Mills and his special skills are going to
save the day but now he's become a superhero, one that doesn't
even have a Kryptonite weakness. And the old man as a
bad guy was a little lame. The last movie didn't have a
central bad guy either, just an entire nation of murderous
Albanians, but that did seem to work better than an old dude
who offered up almost no resistance when the time came.
The basic elements were still there for action movie goodness
however. Liam Neeson's mere presence in these movies
raises them up a couple of levels, Megaton does keep this
nonsense moving as there are plenty of fist fights, car
chases, explosions and plenty of dead Albanians to look at…
but… and this is the main detriment to this otherwise
serviceable action thriller… It's no 'Taken'. I imagine
in the next movie Kimmy will get married and have a baby and
that baby will be Taken by evil Albanians. Freaking
Albanians.
