Action as promised. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Rating: 9/10 (7 October 2012)

Being a big fan of the first film, I rushed to see the sequel right away. I was a tad worried that it didn't have the same director as the first film, but I'm relieved to see that its a sequel worthy, albeit slightly inferior, to its predecessor.
Borrowing from the format established in the first film, Mills attempts to live an ideal family lifestyle that's apparently still picking up the pieces since the incident in the first film. However, as they all labor to heal, the relative stability is compromised by a combination of his job and a vengeful group of Albanian criminals. What follows is a very entertaining exhibition of Mills' "skills" throughout a lower class portion of Istanbul.
What makes this film slightly weaker than the first film however, is an underdeveloped, if less profound enemy the conflict with which is marred by a frustratingly shifty camera. The first film not only highlighted the bad-assity and heartening fatherly instinct of Bryan Mills, but also served to expose some of the criminal and multicultural problems that are very real throughout Paris and, in fact, all of Europe. Slave trade in and from the west is prevalent and not often spoken of. The fact that Taken was willing to tackle the subject, as well as the controversies that surround it, made the film especially deep, if peripherally so. Between an intruding group of Albanian criminals with misogynistic cultural values and a callous "business" man protected by corrupt and apathetic law enforcement, the first film ran the full gamut of the problems involved in combating slave trade in Europe. What's more, it gave the audience a stake in the conflict: this time around, with the disgusting enterprise having affected an American family from a less tumultuous culture, people start caring a lot more. Complementing this message was a shameless display of masterful detective work, profiling, and well choreographed chases and fight scenes.
Taken 2, by comparison, feels slightly more myopic, if not watered down on exactly what the conflict is and what causes it. With the antagonists of the film being blood-related to the antagonists of the first film, this story is clearly compounding the precipitating aspect of the multiple sources of conflict from the original movie: Albanian slave traders. While it's not clear that the Albanian relatives are slave-traders in kind, they clearly share the same cultural origins--which are pointedly Islamic. As such, with the exception of a few corrupt officials here and there, this film tends to concentrate on the runners of organized crime rather than the overseers who were given some more emphasis in the first film. With the scope being so narrow, there's less aspects of their criminal behavior covered, and thus an apparent loss in story. But in the film's defense, it had to trim the leaves to give more definition to the revenge-driven values of the criminals and their culture. To that end, the audience is treated to a clash between not merely organized crime and a loving father/husband, but also of moralities that very clearly differ. On one hand, you have a group of individuals driven by grief, anger, and the desire for satisfaction--characterized, not in so many words, by the undeniable description of an honor killing directed at an imprisoned Mills--whereas on the other hand, you have an individual totally concerned with mowing down baddies for the sole purpose of defending his family.
Adding to this juxtaposition of cultural values is a not-so-subtle double exposure going on in the background. Turkey is an Islamic but ultimately secular country with a secular culture. But the chosen setting for the film, Istanbul, is a symbolic reference to the tremendously relevant artifacts of the nation's Islamic past. Islam and its relevance in this war of ideologies isn't directly confronted by the protagonists or the film's general narrative, but the visual nuances of the film for the intercultural conversation taking place in the city certainly bring it to the fore. Various times, between points of plot advancement, the sky view camera does flyovers of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque that felt meaningful but surreptitious at the same time. Mills and his family are seen fairly often in crowds as the only westerners making their way through a sea of Burqas. More than once, the camera focused on the crescent and star symbol most particular to the Muslim religion--and, incidentally, bears a strong resemblance to the crescent and star gang-symbols tattooed on the hands of the Albanians. Then we have the history of Istanbul itself, formerly known as Constantinople, a capital of Christianity (even amidst multiple regime changes) for 1100 years prior to being invaded, pillaged, and forcibly converted to Islam, its crowning cultural and architectural achievement the Hagia Sophia converted to a Mosque. Each of these much seen but rarely spoken of qualities within the film carries an embedded meaning addressing the underlying premise of 'Westerner preserving his livelihood in the midst of ideological tyranny by Islamic gang bangers'.
Taken 2 is, above all else, a visual piece. If the film isn't busy demonstrating Mills' archetypal picket-fence family, then it's contrasting his family life with that of the antagonists as they bury their dead in a formal Islamic ceremony that's concluded with a declaration of vengeance. If the camera isn't taking in the sites of Istanbul, then it's glorifying Mills' ability to track down and dispense Albanian gangsters with extreme prejudice. This arrangement works to its favor since the dialogue is more often than not an oversight to the action of the film.
Anyone who liked the first movie will assuredly have some appreciation for the second. While you can't say the subject matter in the second film is as widely relevant, or as readily apparent, as the itinerary of the first, it still carries a certain profoundness. And that profundity serves as an adequate side-dish to the main course of action sequences.