Painful.

Rating: 2/10 (14 March 2015)

It somehow seems perfectly apt that the director of this piece of commercial garbage should be called Oliver Megaton. If the name didn't exist it would have to be invented for pile drivers like this.
In "Taken", Liam Neeson, ex Everything, saves his young daughter after she's been kidnapped by greaseballs who want to sell her into white slavery in Paris -- or something like that. He wipes them all out.
Now, the problem is that the villains, all dead, can not be brought back for a sequel. What to do, what to do. Okay. I've got it. The Arab heavies must have a family, right? And, as we all know, them Arab camel drivers are all tribal and everything so we'll have the pater familias seek revenge. An eye for an eye, said Hammurabi, also a camel driver. And who's to object? Everybody has long forgotten George W. Bush's announcement that "we are not at war with Islam." We ARE at war with Islam! Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. They're not good for anything except oil and falafels.
We can almost hear the slight whir of well-practiced gear wheels in the Hollywood studios. For a brief period it was the South American cartels. For an equally brief interval it was the Albanians because who the hell knows where Albania is? The MBAs in Hollywood must yearn for the good old days of fat, bald Nazi sadists and fat, bald Cold War slobs, although they WILL regress from time to time. Both "Air Force One" and the dismal "Crimson Tide" pinned the Russians to the wall -- but splinter groups! The blockbuster "Die Hard" had a German gang but some of them spoke Russian. The executives couldn't make up their minds which was the better villain. In psychology this is known as an approach/approach conflict.
I've kind of skipped the plot because it's an hour-and-a-half burden of meretricious crap. You've seen it all before -- the car chases, the lightning-fast karate blows, the gun skittering along the floor, the horrible deaths of broken necks, shattered bodies, and blood-splattered walls. The climax is emblematic. Neeson is holding a pistol against the head of the last villain, the most important, the old man whose family was decimated. Neeson offers to put the gun down if the old chap will give his word that the vendetta is now at an end. The old man gives his word. Neeson put down the gun and turns to leave. The old man picks up the gun, aims it at Neeson's back, and pulls the trigger. Click. The Baba should have seen that coming. I guess they don't get out to the movies much.
Of course, Liam Neeson, whom I like a lot, is an unpretentious actor and has a remarkably endearing nose. He hulks his way through this paranoid fantasy with no martial arts skills but with a seasoned editor who knows how to make it look as if Neeson did have them.
Nice scenery -- shot in Istanbul.
If you enjoy being tied up and mistreated while wearing a black leather mask and having a red rubber ball strapped in your mouth -- which is okay by me, you know, a chacun à son goût -- then you'll go through an autonomic spasm while watching this. Otherwise, spend your time more constructively.