Let’s be clear about this from the outset – Taken is not a good film. It only has one thing going for it – watching Liam Neeson play a no nonsense hard man, which is something he’s toyed with throughout his career, but here he fully embraces it. Aside from a handful of entertaining action scenes the rest of the film is a chore to watch, and it’s not like it has the charm or fun factor of those classic eighties action flicks. Inexplicably it made a ton of money in the US, found its true market on DVD, and so here we go again.
Yes, you
guessed it, Taken 2 is one of those sequels that no-one ever needed. I had planned to avoid it and then the need to watch something light and dumb with friends arose, so despite my better judgement it happened. But I at
least went in expecting the bad, and boy did
it not fail to deliver. The plot is this
simple – all those bad bad people Neeson’s character Bryan Mills killed in the first
film... well, Rade Serbedzija is after
vengeance for them all, which involves kidnapping Mills, his ex-wife (Famke
Janssen) and attempting to again ensnare his daughter (Maggie Grace), whilst they’re
all in Istanbul. This is all starting to sound like the bad running joke about 24 that Jack Bauer’s daughter was never safe.
So let’s
start with the one solitary positive: the credits take less than ninety minutes to
roll which makes the film feel mercifully short. That's it. Now for the myriad issues...
This is a
terrible excuse for an action film. For starters there isn’t even that much action in Taken 2, but what there
is has been so shoddily edited that it’s almost impossible to make out exactly what’s going
on, which allows the violence to appear tame, bloodless and suitable for a toothless
12A certificate. At least the first film
didn’t feel overly restrained in this manner. There’s at least one fist fight scene that should’ve been good fun to
watch but ends up a mostly indiscernible blur due to the ridiculously fast editing.
Then you’ve
got the cheese. Oh god the cheese. Both Taken films feature some of the most cringeworthy,
painful to watch family scenes ever filmed and they just seem to get worse in
the sequel. The only way to get through
it is to laugh, otherwise you'll find the uncontrollable need to keep facepalming just too much. These scenes predominantly
bookend the film but take up way too much time when Neeson could be meting out
his own brand of justice.
Now of course
you should suspend your disbelief when watching films, but Taken 2 features
some of the most incredulous plotting ever. The way Grace’s character tracks her father down, with his help of
course, is one of the most ridiculous things I have seen in a film for quite
some time. Or never mind the crap about
her struggling to learn to drive and suddenly she’s a master behind the wheel, particularly one with a proper
(read European) gear stick. Neeson’s
character is certainly far less enjoyable to watch this time round despite him
again being the best thing in the film. Then of course there’s the "homage" to Drive’s “I give you a five minute
window” scene, and the stealing of that film’s music (twice), which only serves
to remind what a fantastic film Drive is and how dire Taken 2 is in comparison.
The message
here is plain and simple – don’t watch Taken 2, it’s a bad, bad film. Shooting for a lower certificate may have made the
film more of a financial success but doing so has had an extremely detrimental effect
on how it’s assembled and what it can show. Never mind that thematically for a film of this nature this lower certificate
is questionable anyway. Taken 2 is
boring, laugh out loud funny when it’s not supposed to be, incredulous in the
worst way, terribly written and poorly directed (with this, Colombiana and Transporter 3, Olivier Megaton has a mountain to climb to prove himself even a half decent director). All we can hope is that there won’t be anymore Taken films. Please let there be no more.
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