Complete and utter failure

Rating: 3/10 (9 October 2012)

This film is just a poor attempt to combine all sorts of action movie clichés brought together with a hope that it will attract action movie fans to the film. I am afraid that was a false hope as I think this film was an utter failure. Its performance cannot even be compared with the first Taken film- which I loved. Liam Neeson is marvellous as always but the scenario is awful. There are many ridiculous points throughout the film:
1) How does the girl manage to use three grenades in Istanbul without getting caught by Turkish forces?
2) Are we expected to believe all Turkish police cars are from 1970's and 80's?
3) It is not even a whole day spent in the city and I think we heard more than five hundred calls for prayer...
4) Liam Neeson fights and shoots almost 10-15 guys and I cannot remember him receiving one fist on the chin. Are all bad guys idiots that they let Liam Neeson on his own for hours to let him make phone calls and arrange his escape.
5) Again the bad guys who are shown to be burning with the desire for revenge are not actually that bad as they treat the guy and his family pretty well.
6) The bad guys fire almost thousands of bullets and miss every single shot whereas our ex agent seems to be hitting the target every single time.
7) We see an exceptional (impossible!) driving performance of the girl in narrow and unfamiliar streets of Istanbul where she stepped her foot for the first time in less than 24 hours. Maybe we are expected to believe she inherited (!) those natural skills from her bionic father the day she was born.
8) We are expected to believe that one can consider barging into an embassy courtyard driving through the security and be allowed to walk free by just one call to a guy in the golf field. Seriously???
9) Some of the fighting scenes are too fast, it is impossible to understand what's going on. You just have to sit patiently for two minutes to see who collapses and who is still on his foot to understand who was a better fighter.
10) I thought counting in the car for the turns and noises for boat, music instrument and something else that I do not remember now was so cheesy. The boat and the music guy being in the same place forever and ever is just a laugh. .....
I think I can continue with the list and add 25-50 more ridiculous items. In short I am trying to tell is that this film is not worth going to the cinema and wasting time and money on that. If you had liked the first film and expecting this one to be similar, you will be very disappointed. The story is so poor that I think it is an insult to the audience's intelligence.