Lazy film-making

Rating: 3/10 (23 January 2013)

The laziness in this movie was just incredible. Here's a sequel that relies mostly of ridiculous clichés and several flashbacks from the first feature to get the job done. That someone might even consider giving this a good rating saddens me deeply, because this is just a bad, bad movie.
I must say I wasn't a big admirer of the first Taken either. I though it was a standard, but fairly decent action flick, with a fierce and believable hero in the person of ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson). But Taken 2 represents everything that is wrong with today's movies, as it pretty much sums up to nothing more a shallow sequel, clumsily built on the foundation of a better predecessor.
The story in Taken 2 is the standard follow-up after the original Taken. Remember the Albanians killed in Paris by Mills? Well, their relatives from Tropojë want revenge, so they plan to capture Bryan, along with his wife and daughter, while the three are on vacation in Istanbul, Turkey. I should also say that, since the first Taken, things have changed a bit. Lenore (Famke Janssen) had broken up with her rich husband and Kim (Maggie Grace) is still trying to get her driving license. She now has a boyfriend, of whom, obviously, the super-daddy doesn't approve. Cheesy. Predictable. Stupid. Lame.
Visually, the movie relies heavily on flashbacks from Taken and several panoramic shots with the wonderful city of Istanbul. The action sequences are pretty well done and the bad guys die rather quickly. There are also some (unintentionaly) funny moments. My favorite is when, in a moment of generosity, the kidnappers wait for Neeson, at gunpoint, to call his beloved daughter and let her know that she's about to get abducted again - in a phone conversation similar to the one from the first Taken.
After the no-named thugs led by Murade (Rade Serbedzija) have been completely annihilated by Mills & Kim (on race-driver mode), the films ends, as expected, on a familiar note. With everyone happy, but the viewer.