When the father of a man killed by Bryan Mills seeks revenge, he targets not only Bryan himself, but his daughter and ex-wife, hunting them down on a family vacation in Istanbul. Although this time, Bryan himself is Taken, leading him to enlist the help of Kim to help him escape and hunt down the men responsible ensuring they will never be bothered again. Olivier Megaton's Taken 2 is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a sequel to the original - it's a lazy effort, that simply goes through the motions relying heavily on the appeal of the first film. The film begins with a painful amount of ex positional dialogue, keeping the viewer up to date with the Mills family, while giving us a heavy dose of sentimentality that just comes off as laughable. This effort and making the film emotionally important only slows down the pacing of the film, taking away the stripped down, lean structure of the first film which made it so much fun. The action scenes in Taken 2 are extremely chaotic and poorly edited, with camera work that definitely gives the viewer a sense of the chaotic nature while sacrificing any type of coherence which ultimately left me very frustrated. This film just lacks the balls of the first film and isn't nearly as gritty or brutal this time around. What I loved about the first film is that Neeson's character was a runaway freight train who would destroy anything in his way and Taken 2 just doesn't have that same type of feeling or desperation to its structure. Taken 2 isn't as horrible as I am making it out to be but it offers nothing new or terribly interesting, making it a film that is forgettable, unlike the original. 5/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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