If You Enjoyed This Movie, I Will Look For You...I Will Find You...And I Will Kill You

Rating: 4/10 (8 October 2012)

I love the first Taken. To me, it is a fine example of an action movie with solid build up, top notch acting, and, well, memorable action sequences. In this day and age, how often does that come along? And when I saw the trailer for the sequel, I knew it wasn't going to be as great as the first one. Still, I figured it'd be a good time at the theater. Was I right? Well...no.
Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. You will never hear me say anything bad about Liam Neeson. The man is one of the few actors today that just demands respect and awe when he enters the room. A perfect example was in Battleship; the movie was awful, but Liam Neeson was one of the few things about that film that worked. And there's no exception here. They did things with the character of Bryan Mills that I didn't agree with, but Neeson is having fun with the part, so I got to respect that.
I was also glad to see more of Famke Janssen in the movie. With so little screen time in the first movie, I was looking forward to seeing more of her in the sequel. And, whether you love her or hate her, Maggie Grace did a fine job as Neeson's daughter. I actually like her character; sort of a spoiled girl who must be...well, competent in order to survive.
Also, the first twenty minutes began to feel like a solid follow up to the first movie. You see the relationship with the family, how Bryan is dealing with his daughter having a boyfriend. There are some pretty funny jokes you can get out of that scenario and they take advantage of the majority of them.
Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the bad stuff. The action in this movie is some of the worst I've ever seen, which is a shame because the action in the first movie was very slick and nicely choreographed. Here, the editing is so choppy and abrupt that you can hardly see what's going on. I haven't seen anything else done by this director, but I hear that his action movies are all this way.
Also the story is sort of a mess. I could follow it fine in the beginning, but as soon as the family arrives in Istanbul, things take a turn for the worse. The pacing suffers tremendously here and there's just too much suspension of disbelief going for me to have bought what was happening. Yeah, there was a lot of that going on in the first movie, but because the action was so great and the pacing was so quick, you didn't question it.
Final verdict: This is a disappointing, unsatisfactory sequel to a phenomenal movie. Basically everything that made the first movie great is the opposite here. It's not horrendous, but there are plenty of other action movies that deserve your time and money. I really don't know who to recommend this movie to, especially if you're a fan of the first movie like I am.