Thumbs Up!

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2012)

He stood up against the Nazis, he trained batman, he is the father of all gods and men, he leads the A Team, he is a guardian of Narnia and a JEDI, why on earth would you seek to trouble his family?
This is a good movie. It is entertaining, it is thrilling, there is a decent level of suspense and it has Liam Neeson. A good plot that compliments the first movie and if you are entertained by movie number 1 you will for sure enjoy movie number 2.
Making sequels to great movies is risky business than safe. TAKEN was a massive hit back in 2008 since it was the first of its kind. Surprisingly TAKEN 2 are good and entertaining almost as its predecessor. Personally it is my strong belief that the change in the director too is a beneficial move towards its limited success since the styles vary in direction and this reduces the similarities if the movies are compared. However one cannot deny that it is a parody of TAKEN but still it greatly is a better sequel than HANGOVER 2. As it always has been with motion pictures, sequels work much well on action movies than comedy or Horror genres.
The 60 year old mega Hollywood star is the obvious reason that the TAKEN duology (it's a madeup word) is the hit action movie that it is. Who are we speaking of? Liam Neeson of course (If you did take a moment to answer that you could be one of those that saw no sense in the plot of Taken!). Oscar Nominee Liam Neeson effortlessly carries a massive one man showdown of entertainment this time as well. What I like about Liam Neeson is that he is the Steven Segal (apart from the voice) of today. Whilst not a Martial Arts expert, he indeed is calm and masculinly (made it up too) graceful. Is he not a versatile actor?
Also the inclusion Maggie Grace once again is a nice touch along with Famke Jansenne (XMEN). If there is one thing great about this movie is that Kim gets to play a larger role and she assists in changing the entire formula of TAKEN 2 reducing the resemblance to movie number 01! Maggie Grace delivers adequately and of course is tom boyishly beautiful. Like father like daughter is what I kept muttering to myself as her character matured through the minutes of the action. She is someone indeed to look forward to in the year 2013. She is talented and beautiful sadly the same cannot be said about Nicki Minaj!!!!! (Nope she is not in the movie)
As much as I am a fan of Mr. Neeson TAKEN gives us an overdose of Neeson with Maggie Grace reducing the concentrate at timely intervals. It does feel that the screenplay is not boldly written since it has large shoes to fill with the 2008 movie. Therefore it is entirely entwined on Neeson that the villains are almost nonexistent. While director Olivier Megaton draws interest to the idea of reprisal, the villains are so droopily written that none of them are given names! In my opinion this results in a lower rating than what the movie has potential for if the screenplay is fearless.
I would watch this movie again without hesitation so you should at least watch it once.
Happy New Year Folks!
TITLE: TAKEN 2 DIRECTED BY: OLIVIER MEGATON STARRING: LIAM NEESON, MAGGIE GRACE, FAMKE JANSENNE AND RADE SERBEDZIJA RATED: PG13 RATING: 6.5/10 RUNTIME: 92 MINUTES