![]() ![]() (It’s a complicated process that resembles something like a bad game of Battleship but in the middle of a highly populated residential area.) That gives her a chance to call her dad and then proceed to toss grenades around the city in an effort to locate the position of her missing parents. Kim manages to escape and, fortunately for her, Murad and this men lack the technological wherewithal to track her down using her cell phone. Rather than scale up the sense of threat, as you’d expect from a sequel, Taken 2 simply ships in another group of rather dim cannon fodder – moving targets who are often killed while watching television.Soon after Kim and Bryan’s former wife Lenore (Famke Hanssen) join him for a few days of vacation in Istanbul, Murad and his own set of thugs close in, capturing the two adults. The first film established Mills as a kind of middle-aged Übermensch, and he continues to tower physically and psychologically over everyone here. Its refusal to invest the bad guys with even a shred of character is a mistake, since we’ve no particular reason to fear them they’re an identikit band of bestubbled men in dishevelled clothing, and look so similar to one another that they might even be played by the same two stunt men in every scene. The major problem lies in Kamen and Besson’s story. Various neck-snapping sound effects appear to have been removed in the quest for a lower certification (something its 12A rating bears out), blunting the close-quarters action, and leaving some sequences looking as though Neeson’s simply hugging his victims to death (a power Neeson may actually possess). The initially engaging action, which includes a chase that looks like the classic videogame Crazy Taxi, and a hilarious deployment of hand grenades, gradually gives way to grinding repetition. Somewhere in the second half, director Olivier Megaton ( Transporter 3, Colombiana) gradually allows the tension to dissipate, like air escaping from a punctured tyre. ![]() At one point, Mills leans over to his wife and issues her with a rapid and incredibly lengthy set of instructions, which goes something like, “Go to the back of that shop. ![]() As Bryan, Kim and Lenore run, drive and fight to avoid the clutches of the gangsters (with varying degrees of success), the pace remains brisk, the dialogue deliciously fruity. “Your mother and I are going to be… taken,” Mills says in one titter-inducing scene, and it’s a wonder how Neeson resisted the urge to wink at the camera after he uttered it.įor the first 45 minutes, this sense of the absurd keeps Taken 2 afloat. Mills’ survival and combat abilities are almost superhuman here, and some moments of dialogue run headlong into self-parody. Returning writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen appear to have their tongues tucked in their cheeks for Taken 2. He enjoys waxing his car, flirting with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), and still has a creepily keen interest in the day-to-day teen antics of his teenage daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). Over in Los Angeles, life’s returned to relative normality for Bryan Mills. “The man who has brought us such pain and suffering,” seethes Murad, “we’ll find him. ![]() One of them is Murad (Rade Serbedzija), the father of a luckless goon who Mills had electrocuted in a Paris basement. On a hillside in Albania, a funeral’s taking place for the people Mills slaughtered back in France. Taken 2 is set a year later, and deals with the consequences of the first film’s bloody rampage. Vowing to “Tear the Eiffel Tower down” if he had to, Mills set about shooting, stabbing and torturing his way across the city of romance. In 2008’s Taken, Liam Neeson starred as the seemingly indestructible Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA operative whose daughter was snatched by Albanian gangsters while on holiday in Paris. ![]()
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