Taken 2 (2012) Dir: Olivier Megaton
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The first film became a surprise hit, which ignited its star's career as an action hero, and also meant that we got two sequels, the first of which being this Olivier Megaton directed effort from 2012. It doesn't have brilliant reviews, but I wanted to see if there was still enjoyment to be found in it.
The short answer is: not really. The first twenty-five minutes of the film were almost exclusively exposition dumping scenes, and not very good ones either. I could've fallen asleep by the time anything actually interesting happened. The story was ham-fisted and sloppy, but the premise itself wasn't terrible.
The action sequences were fine, but nowhere near as exciting as those in the first film. What's worse is that they were the only thing holding this film together, because the story certainly wasn't doing that. The film was paced horribly too - it crawled through its ninety minute runtime.
Liam Neeson was alright in the film's leading role. I liked him a lot more in the first film, but I didn't hate him here. His character's writing had some irritating moments early on, but once the action got under way it was fine.
Maggie Grace had a lot more to do in this sequel than she had done previously, but, in all honesty, she failed to leave a particularly positive impression. She was more forgettable than outright poor, but, either way, it wasn't good enough.
Famke Janssen had some pretty good scenes dotted about in this one, but the writing left her swimming upstream more often than not. In terms of dramatic acting, she was probably the best in the film, though she didn't have much competition, in truth.
Rade Šerbedžija provided what can only be described as a rather dull, 'copy-and-paste', antagonist, who had no discernable characteristics or qualities, and nothing much to offer in the way of his acting. In fairness, there really was nothing written for him to work with.
Overall, this was such a bland and boring sequel, which very clearly only existed to capitalise on the success of the much more enjoyable original. I'd be genuinely surprised there was a third film that followed this one, if it weren't for its box office success. Regardless, I wasn't a fan of this one.
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