Taken 2 (2012)

Terrible action, bad script, bad cinematography. The John Wick films are basically just the better versions of these Taken movies. Go watch John Wick and John Wick: Chapter 2 instead.

Well, as an American born in Palm Springs, CA and raised in Istanbul, this movie is simply transmitting and portraying irrelevant, wrong and incorrect information about Istanbul. And as different from the other Taken movies, Taken 2: Istanbul is a complete waste of production and time. Folks, Turkey does not share even a single feet of border with Albania. There are like hundreds or even nearly a thousand of miles. And that border control office, LOL simply bullshit. Most Turkish borders are way more protected than any of Canadian or American borders, as a result of being a modern and secular state but unfortunately located near those bloody and problematic Middle Eastern soils. All those pursuit scenes that look like a continuous segment of shooting were shot in extremely different and irrelevant locations, like 2 hours of driving between each of them (Taksim, Balat, Haydarpasa, Kadikoy, Istinye) under the traffic of Istanbul also as a natural result of being a +14 million populated county- and yes, Istanbul is a metropolitan, way larger and more populated than Los Angeles - Not a third-world-state- looking, typical radical Islamic, black-scarfians-all-around city as portrayed in the film; just like the hilarious cop cars (which actually Istanbul PD had preferred them a lot around late 80s - early 90s), well thanks to God now IPD drives Nissan Qashqais, most are covered with Kevlar as a bulletproof. Just go visit Istanbul, it's such a magnificent city to see.

Taken 2 is no where near the first film. Its filled with inconsistencies and silly clichéd situation which don't make any sense at all. Yet somehow, I felt it was an somewhat satisfactory experience thanks to the powerhouse Liam Neeson and some good action. The families of all the Albanian human-traffickers killed by Brian in first film are very angry and are now seeking revenge. This time they try to capture Brian along with his ex-wife Lenore and daughter Kim. But they are successful in capturing only Brian and Lenore. Kim escapes with guidance from her father over his secret cell-phone(which by the looked silly and unrealistic). Now its Kim's job to locate them and then along with her dad kill the bad guys! I liked the way Brian deduces his location with his skills and also didn't mind Kim given the role of savior. Even if on the whole the story maybe rehash of first one, its a bit dynamic in its approach. Liam Neeson is bad-ass as in the first film and action sequences are good again (except the car chases). He is enough reason to give the film some credits. It is still filled with insanely silly things such as Kim learning to drive a gear-shift car out of nowhere or when the bad guys not even torturing Brian or Lenore after kidnapping them. Great Revenge! There is not even person guarding Brian despite knowing the kind of skills he posses and thus he left alone to easily plan his escape. Cool! Taken 2 has its fill of stupidities, yet there were many things I liked. I liked the way they extended the father-daughter relationship and made Kim make up for her rather passive role in first film. The story may be predictably silly at times but I couldn't resist wanting to watch Neeson kick some ass. Taken 2 is an obvious step down from first film but considering kind of horrible sequels we are getting these days in the action genre, it is not so bad. And after watching the Taken 3 recently, Taken 2 feels like an excellent film.RATING: [2.5/5]

Rather inevitable follow-up to "Taken" the movie that made Liam Neeson an unlikely action hero, like an older Jason Bourne, by which I men a bunch of bad men come after Liam's family, this time and mother makes three and live, or should that be die to regret it. There is a change of location to Istanbul which means we get some nice establishing shots of the city and one action chase across the rooftops to afford some nice views of the skyline.Otherwise, Liam is up to his usual tricks of being able to avoid bullets at will, kill a man by just laying his hand on his face, guide his daughter go the baddies lair by having her through grenades all over the city and best of all recreate the route back to the villains himself with a combination of super hearing and total recall which wouldn't embarrass a cross between Superman and Sherlock Holmes.Oh and there's lots of shooting, killing, fist fights and car chases, the silliest of which being when Liam's daughter tears across town driving like an Indy 500 veteran with her dad in the passenger seat, trying to avoid the pursuing would-be killers and achieving a death- defying race across a railway line which the other car doesn't...before she's even passed her driving-test.It's all unbelievable nonsense, directed at a furious pace with cross-cuts and multiple shots of the same scene, to a pounding musical backdrop just to further reinforce the feeling that you're actually in the middle of a shoot-em-up-cum-car-chase computer game.Neeson does his best latter-day John Wayne, but the incompetence of the baddies, plus they seem to have a far-from-threatening family ringleader means that the ending is never in doubt. In fact I'd go as far to say the beginning and middle were never in doubt either, if you've seen "Taken 1".Pretty predictable, passionless stuff all round I'd say.