Within the past five years, Liam Neeson has become a household name for the reserved albeit lethal action hero. While films such as The A-Team, Unknown and The Grey may have contributed to this caricature, the origin of Neeson’s reputation as bona fide bad-guy beater can easily be traced to the 2008 action flick Taken. While admittedly brainless, Taken nevertheless developed a respective following and sparking the mythos of Neeson’s deadly reputation. In a nutshell, Taken follows ex-CIA spy who must travel to Paris to rescue his daughter from an Albanian human-trafficking circuit. There’s no real espionage, international intrigue, or bleeding heart morals to muddy the water. It’s a film driven by almost entirely by the satisfaction of seeing a devoted father shoot, hack, stab and chop his way through the anonymous hordes of mobsters and criminals to reclaim someone he loves and for the most part, it worked.
Unfortunately, Taken 2 loses a large degree of the energy and attitude of the original. Granted, the expectation for new material or an innovative plot was never a realistic expectation for this sequel, Taken 2 falls short of many of the triumphs that made Taken so invigorating while echoing many of the shortcomings that made it reciprocally outlandish. The plot involves the head Mafioso of the Albanian mob Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) seeking revenge on Bryan Mills (Neeson) who killed and tortured several of his men while rescuing his daughter in the previous film. The gangsters manage to track him down to Istanbul where Neeson is enjoying a family vacation with his 17-year old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and his recently singled ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). What follows is your typical series of car chases and gunfights in what initially looks like a louder, faster simulacrum of the original movie.
Where Taken 2 fails, however, is in the scene-by-scene execution. While audiences were able to wince with enjoyment at the uncompromising neck-chops and arm breaks of the first movie, the action in Taken 2 is almost impossible to follow due to the film’s excessive use of speed cuts. The combat scenes follow such a staccato tempo that the choreography is difficult to appreciate while the few that are discernible offer nothing cringe-worthy or creative.
While apparent that Neeson – who’d turned sixty during production – can still can hold his own, his presence within Taken 2 is fueled mostly by his pre-established reputation from his previous films. Because the mobsters are now after him and not just his family, the motivation of Neeson’s character loses a degree of its magnetism. Now he’s just trying to survive, his involvement in the danger is no longer an active choice on his part. While it may have been difficult to recycle this concept in a sequel without seeming repetitive, Taken 2 offers little else replace that protective, endearing quality that made Neeson’s character so fun to root for in the original.
In addition to this, the villain Murad never provides any real sense of menace or panache to his role, instead spending the majority of his screen time seated comfortably in a recliner checking his phone for updates on the chase. It’s aspects like these that I believe speaks to a much larger, overarching deficiency in the narrative execution of the film; lethargy. The movie takes no real risks or goes out of its way to make any of its numerous shootouts or chases particularly original or memorable.
Ultimately, Taken 2 reinforces an ugly truth begrudgingly known by many movie fans. If a film does well, chances are a sequel will be made to cash in on the title. While it may be unpleasant to affiliate such a work ethic to Taken, it’s clear that the makers of Taken 2 where not interested in taking risks or showing much effort to begin with. Nothing ever truly feels at risk and everything that transpires on the screen could be easily appreciated two-fold by an at-home viewing of the original feature film.
