Film Review - Taken 2 (2012)

Taken 2 is the follow up to 2008's Taken and again stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills but the story this time sees him, his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) and his daughter (Maggie Grace) in Istanbul but the family the men Mills murdered in the first film are there as well and they want revenge.

I went into Taken 2 with some degree of optimism as I really loved the first one, it was dark, it was exciting and it reminded me of the good old days of action cinema like Die Hard and the first two Mad Max movies, so did this sequel give me a worthy follow up?

Sadly, no, this film is very very disappointing for two key reasons each of which I'll outline:

Firstly, the film itself is just really boring to watch, the Istanbul location is not shot with the same excitement Paris was in the first film, Neeson sounds like he'd rather be somewhere else, the action feels very generic and has none of the impact the action scenes in the first film had and Janssen and Grace become somewhat annoying after a while.

But what's worst of all is that Neeson sits on the sidelines for a good 2/3rds of this movie and is either tied up, on his phone or barking orders like a stern general, it almost feels like a different character to the no nonsense man of action we met and liked in the first one and wanted to see again in this one, again its just very disappointing.

There was however one positive and it doesn't come from the film itself, it was from seeing the trailer for the new James Bond film Skyfall on the big screen, that had me genuinely excited and thinking "Bring it On."

So all in all this would arguably be my biggest disappointment of the year so far and all it does is just remind me of the other follow ups to films I loved; Highlander II, Iron Man 2, Robocop 2 and Die Hard 2 all of which I didn't like very much at all and this sits on the same shelf, 1 out of 5.