"Taken...again?"

Rating: 3/10 (6 October 2012)

Back in January, Liam Neeson was on his A-game with The Grey, an abstract, stylish, and truly exhilarating picture about survival of the fittest and how to cope with life when you're down to your wit's end. The film has gone on to have sort of a tainted legacy, with some viewers questioning its logic, its realism or lack thereof, or simply the ending, which has left a good or bad impression on many.
It wouldn't surprise me if I learned the same people criticizing the logic and realism of The Grey are the same people who loved Neeson's earlier picture Taken and will be lining up at the multiplex to see this sequel, ominously and ridiculously titled Taken 2 (there's not much else they could've called it, but there are certain titles you don't place a "2" after). Both films lack logical points here and there, but the last time I saw a sequel this lax and lazy was The Hangover Part II. Taken 2 is a thrilling roller-coaster you've rode on before; an exercise in rehashing formula that wasn't particularly compelling the first time around. My praise for the first one was minimal, but I admitted that the film offered more exposition and detail than previous action films cared to give their audience.
Yet it would seem the only way Taken 2 knows how to expand on its characters is by flashing back to its predecessor in cheap and choppy fashions. The film opens with a group of men in Albania attending a funeral, mourning the men who ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), killed in efforts to find his kidnapped daughter. Then we cut to present day and learn that Kim is trying to get her driver's license (need I mentioned Kim is played by Maggie Grace, who is twenty-nine and looks absolutely nothing like a teenager?). Bryan is still overprotective, as usual, and decides to book a trip to Istanbul, not far off from Albania, I may add, with his daughter and ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen).
But wouldn't you know it? Not too long after Bryan, Lenore, and Kim arrive in Istanbul, the two parents go out for a drive and are subsequently kidnapped by the same Albanian men we saw mourning their loved ones in the beginning of the film. And wouldn't you know something else? When Bryan is tied up, he manages to call Kim, who is still back at the hotel room, and has her open his enormous briefcase of everything a spy/ex-CIA agent could want, pull out a map, calculate the circumference in several areas, ink spots where he might be located, throw multiple grenades out the hotel window to try and see if her father can hear them, and is able to find out exactly where he is in a matter of twenty cinematic minutes? If you thought the original film was incredulous, this film is light years more far-fetched than its predecessor.
Olivier Megaton's direction is some of the worst I've seen. Almost as bad as Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The fight scenes (and there are a lot of them) are largely jumbled and incoherent, and the scenes of car chases, with vehicles reaching high speeds and bullets flying in every conceivable direction, shots rarely last longer than a second and the camera never remains still. The whole photography is gray and monotonous, and captured under unsteady direction, it's a messy looking endeavor.
Emerging from Taken 2, I had but two questions looming in my head; one, why is Bryan Mills so good at saving his daughter from danger yet so inept when it comes to protecting her from danger in the first place? The other question is, how can twenty-nine year old (ahem, sixteen year old) Kim fail a driver's test yet be able to drive so fluently through the uncertain streets of Istanbul at top speed with bullets flying through her windshield? And don't get me started on the scene where her and Bryan crash through the US Embassy's booth...
Starring: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, and Maggie Grace. Directed by: Olivier Megaton.