Review - Taken 2

On a professional scale, I know I wouldn’t make a very good film critic. Not because I lack the knowledge of the Kermodes or the know-how of Tarantinos, but because I almost always find some way to appreciate a movie. All it really takes is for some semblance of the will to please its audience and I can come away from most flicks pleased as punch. This year alone I’d have raved about Battleship’s hilarious self-aware humour amidst a dull blockbuster, or Lockout’s almost-parody of Bruce Willis films in a fantastically crap, straight-to-DVD-worthy flick. I’d have given Safe House fairly decent marks for the appearance of Ryan Reynolds alone.

Taken, the 2008 action-fest starring Liam Neeson was very much one of those cases, thanks to its unapologetic shallowness, its realisation of Neeson as a hardcore action star and its glorious violence. Never has such a simple-minded thriller made itself out to be something so much more, and the ignorance it had in thinking that gave you a smile all the way through. Its sequel, Taken 2, is not the kind of film where I can be so forgiving.

The plot for any entry in the Taken franchise (as I’m going to assume the inevitable third and fourth with a team up with Justin Long won’t deviate) is that Bryan Mills (Neeson) goes to a foreign country where either A. Bryan himself B. his wife (Famke Jessen) C. his daughter (Maggie Grace) or D. all of the above get snatched up by baddies. In this case it’s option D, as the relatives of the baddies from the original come looking for revenge after Bryan slaughters them for trying to sell his daughter to the sex trade.

The shallow plot is not the problem – as far as I’m concerned the film doesn’t even need to waste its time getting to the point where Neeson gets punchy. The problem is the punchy. It’s just not… punchy (see first sentence of review).

Taken 2 is a cold, calculated action film, and not just in terms of its bland content, but in its budget and economics. The BBFC has (somewhat generously) awarded it a 12A certificate to get the kids in on the money train, meaning much of the violence is edited down or simply cut away. Meanwhile the action that takes up three quarters of the movie is some of the least ambitious you’ll ever see. Most of it involves Leeson walking with no real urgency down a corridor, and shooting an imbecile before they shoot him, rinse and repeat. Doing so, he manages to look so bored you’d think saving his wife and kid were a Sunday afternoon chore. Any hand-to-hand action is made ugly and confusing by terrible camera work, and the only villain in the entire film that can last more than five seconds against the might of Qui-Gon-Jinn is a chubby, tiny, tracksuit-wearing henchman.

It’s still got that same smiling idiocy of the original (the kind where a sexually-abused, sex-trafficked girl gets over it by having singing lessons from a pop star after Daddy’s murdered everyone), but it ends up working against the movie amidst the dreary dullness of the ‘action’. Taken was dumb fun, Taken 2 only manages to be really, excruciatingly dumb. It feels like this was a script originally called ‘Ready Salted – The Film’ and switched out the name with Taken 2 to make the $$$.

And that’s all that Taken 2 is – the most unapologetic cash-in 2012 has seen, bearing none of the charm or cheap thrills that made the first tick. It’s as bland as it is boring. And, even for me, that really is unforgiveable.