One of the worst sequels ever made

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 2013)

Taken 2: the audience. It's difficult to say anything positive about this mechanically constructed piece of crap. The fact that it earned over $100 million in profits is a horrid testament to the movie going public who apparently don't mind bad scripts, xenophobia, the suspension of disbelief required to have grenades tossed within a major city and not attract the attention of the police, horrible fight scene staging, and a ridiculously stupid drivers test subplot. This should be used by film schools everywhere as a textbook example of a bad sequel.
What I really hated: the daughter is, in fact, played by a 30 year old actress who happens to look 30. Overprotective Liam obsesses about her having a boyfriend (gasp!) and the impact it has on her all-important drivers test... Yet she drives like an F1 driver with a stick while dodging bullets in Istambul.
The writer-director also managed to relocate Albania and place it next to Turkey.
How people can pass through post 9/11 borders armed to the teeth.
And how it cheats the audience out of the fight scenes, real reason most of them were drawn to the damn thing in the first place. They are flash edited and incomprehensible, robbing any impact that would've made the stinking thing at least somewhat redeemable.
This is a bad, bad, bad movie. I gave it an overly generous 1.