Taken 2 far

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2013)

I was kind of looking forward to this. I thoroughly enjoyed the first Taken movie and hoped for a repeat of the action and tension in this film. Sadly, it was not to be.
There are a number of problems with the film, not the least of which is that it isn't really tense at all. Not in the slightest. There is action and shooting and fighting, but none of it has any real bite to it at all.
Next there are the ridiculous plot devices that mar the movie. Barricades in front of an embassy are not set so that you can drive straight between them. Istanbul is painted as a 'Mos Eisley' style den of lawlessness where you can shoot guns and set off grenades without repercussions.
My favvorite, though, is the physics abuse moment. Most films have them, but this one is a classic. In it, Neeson's character has his daughter set off a grenade whilst he is talking to her on a mobile phone. He hears the explosion on the phone, then starts counting until he hears the blast normally. He counts to just under four seconds which, in his infinite (but badly incorrect) judgement, he tells his daughter is four and a half kilometres. I'm sorry, but the speed of sound in air is approx. 340 metres per second, not over 1,000 m/s! It's nonsense like the above that make the movie into a mindless action-fest and not the clever film that its predecessor was. That, plus the lack of menace in any of the villains, really make the film fall flat on its face.
SUMMARY: Dull and repetitive, dumb plot devices and awful science, incompetent villains who aren't scary. Dialled in performances from Neeson and Jansen. A recipe for a movie you'll watch once and then never, ever watch again.