This movie takes half an hour to get warmed up, after a bit too long with the non-action backstory drama. But once it gets going about half an hour in, it turns roughly into what we know and expect from the first Taken movie. But even with all that backstory building, it’s really much ado about nothing early on, because this movie’s backstory is still quite reliant on knowing how the first movie went down.
Seeing Liam Neeson run around town, away from those who intend to kidnap him and his family members, really highlights the kind of fragile, awkward movement that only the trained eye could clock onto in the first movie. The fight scenes are also a bit weaker this time round, with a lot of camera angle flashing – a serious lack of rolling footage that lasts more than a fraction of a second – this is a classic budget coverup tactic for actors who can’t really fight, but the last movie didn’t have so much of this going on – not because Neeson could fight any better, but because it must have had a better screen combat team, including choreographers assisting him and stunt doubles standing in for him etc. I guess they’ve cut the budget in that department for Taken 2.
On the plus side, there’s realistic tactics displayed again by Neeson’s character Bryan Mills here, including things we didn’t see in the last movie. Such as memorising a journey taken when kidnapped, by counting seconds while listening out for sounds and driving style changes all along the way, even while blindfolded, in order to re-trace the same route later on; and using items concealed in clothing, to facilitate escape (in this case, a mini cellphone). Then measuring distance while on the phone by counting seconds between an explosion on each end.
On the plus side also, Maggie Grace‘s acting has improved slighty since the last movie. Not massively so, but it’s a little bit better than it was before. Just a little bit.
Around an hour in, things really warm up, as Bryan instructs his daughter Kim on how to help him and her mother to escape. There’s a good 10 minutes of fast action from here – mainly a high speed car chase where Kim is in the driving seat. This, combined with her helping him to escape earlier on, makes this movie very much about the daughter playing the action hero while the father himself is a somewhat immasculated man – a theme we saw from the very beginning while he’s meekly trying to win over his ex wife, who he treats like royalty, even though she’s been with another man for some time. All this girl power and immasculation stuff probably ticks a few boxes for the producers, but makes for a much weaker action movie – it’s much less enjoyable – it’s much weaker in its highs, and it’s much stronger in its lulls – it’s got less pleasantry, and more unpleasantry, which is no mean feat considering the nature of the last movie. It’s not until the last 20 minutes (15 if you take out the closing credits) when Bryan really does his thing and tries to rescue his ex wife.
All in all, it’s not massively different from the first Taken movie, and it has some slightly fresh ideas of its own, but it’s clearly a weaker movie over all, while still being mildly entertaining enough and on-genre enough to earn a Below Average rating I’d say. And that may even be a bit generous considering all the hard-to-watch monotonous and unpleasant chunks that I found myself fast-forwarding through in the knowledge that I was missing absolutely nothing from the goodness of the movie and even saving myself the pain of the screeching background noise that I can only assume is a desperate attempt to add flesh on the bones of the movie and build some kind of suspense & momentum when in fact it really serves only to irritate, not dissimilar to annoying noisy adverts jumping out and disturbing your mood while trying to enjoy a decent YouTube video for example (I’m sure that’s done as a psychological warfare tactic, and not really for the ad revenue).
Bryan’s ex wife in this movie and the last, called Lenore Mills, is played adequately by Famke Janssen who you may recognise as Jean Grey aka Phoenix from the X-Men movie series prior to Sophie Turner taking over that role for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
The main baddie in this movie – the father of the main baddie in the previous movie – is played by Rade Šerbedžija (from Tekken 2). He’s not a bad actor but he seems to have a habit of appearing in slightly flopped sequels with similar names. Watch out for him if you want to make a movie called anything like Token 2 or Toucan 2!