Miss taken

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2015)

Rather inevitable follow-up to "Taken" the movie that made Liam Neeson an unlikely action hero, like an older Jason Bourne, by which I men a bunch of bad men come after Liam's family, this time and mother makes three and live, or should that be die to regret it. There is a change of location to Istanbul which means we get some nice establishing shots of the city and one action chase across the rooftops to afford some nice views of the skyline.
Otherwise, Liam is up to his usual tricks of being able to avoid bullets at will, kill a man by just laying his hand on his face, guide his daughter go the baddies lair by having her through grenades all over the city and best of all recreate the route back to the villains himself with a combination of super hearing and total recall which wouldn't embarrass a cross between Superman and Sherlock Holmes.
Oh and there's lots of shooting, killing, fist fights and car chases, the silliest of which being when Liam's daughter tears across town driving like an Indy 500 veteran with her dad in the passenger seat, trying to avoid the pursuing would-be killers and achieving a death- defying race across a railway line which the other car doesn't...before she's even passed her driving-test.
It's all unbelievable nonsense, directed at a furious pace with cross-cuts and multiple shots of the same scene, to a pounding musical backdrop just to further reinforce the feeling that you're actually in the middle of a shoot-em-up-cum-car-chase computer game.
Neeson does his best latter-day John Wayne, but the incompetence of the baddies, plus they seem to have a far-from-threatening family ringleader means that the ending is never in doubt. In fact I'd go as far to say the beginning and middle were never in doubt either, if you've seen "Taken 1".
Pretty predictable, passionless stuff all round I'd say.