Taken 2

A passable yet underwhelming sequel, Taken 2 follows Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills as he’s once again forced to embark on an ass-kicking spree after his family is targeted by nefarious villains. There’s little doubt that Taken 2, like its predecessor, suffers from an aggressively tedious opening half hour that’s heavy on melodrama and light on action, with Neeson’s solid performance and the promise of impending violence going a long way towards sustaining one’s waning interest. And although the inclusion of elements designed to echo the first movie is often laughable (eg Bryan calls up his daughter, while at gunpoint, to warn her that he and her mother are about to be abducted), Taken 2, once it gets going, is exactly the kind of compulsively watchable actioner that one has come to expect from producer Luc Besson – with the agreeable atmosphere heightened by Neeson’s stirring performance and the sporadic emphasis on ludicrous yet entertaining set pieces (eg Bryan figures out his location by listening to a series of explosions around the city). It’s just as clear, however, that the movie is never quite able to recapture the palpable intensity and propulsive momentum that defined the original, with the by-the-numbers nature of Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s screenplay resulting in a rather generic feel that extends to virtually every aspect of the proceedings. (And, of course, the movie’s lamentable PG-13 rating is especially disappointing this time around, as Olivier Megaton’s kinetic visuals ensure that it’s impossible to comfortably discern what’s happening within several key fight sequences.) Taken 2 is, in the end, a phoned-in sequel that nevertheless gets the job done, though it’s difficult, given the effectiveness of 2008’s Taken, not to have expected something a little more memorable from the film.

*** out of ****