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In Taken 2, the family of the villains Bryan Mills used his special set of skills to kill in the first movie come to take their revenge on him and his own. The bad guys this time around choose to go after him in Istanbul, a very scenic city.
I'd like to start off by saying that I've never seen any of the other Taken movies before I watched this one. I'd heard all kinds of good things about the first and the second, so I figured it was time to see what the series is all about. As it turns out you don't really need to know anything about the first movie to get this one, since there are flashbacks of key scenes.
This was a fun action movie to watch. Liam Neeson makes a very good action star. His character, Bryan Mills, is protective, paranoid, and very good at what he does. Shannon, I mean Kim, turns out to be better and more interesting than I expected. I'm glad she had something to do - finding her father and that intense, high-speed, driving lesson through the streets of Istanbul was the highlight of the movie for me. As for Brian's wife, Jean Gray, I was a little disappointed. I wish she could have had more to do, aside from nearly bleeding out and stuff. By the way, the leading villain played by Rade Serbedzija who also plays Prince Kuragin on Downton Abbey.
I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but I did have a few issues with the movie. One was during my favorite scene where Bryan is coaching Kim on how to find him. You know that part where he has her lobbing hand grenades in a densely populated city, what's that about?! I liked the idea of calculating distance through noise, but did it have to be grenades? Who knows what rooftops she was throwing them onto - I mean, what if one of them was an orphanage or a rest home? Another issue that is common in a lot of action movies is present here, too, when the bad guys are really bad shots and the good guy is a great shot. This movie has a lot of that going on - the bad guys shoot hundreds of rounds and still miss their target, while Bryan only needs one to do the job. That does get old fast, but it's par for the course. Finally, the ending was a bit of a let down - it basically just sets up more sequels. I was also kind of disappointed in Prince Kuragin's reasoning for going after Bryan. He knows and doesn't care how bad his son was, but simply wants revenge because Bryan killed his boy.
Overall, though, Taken 2 is a good, thrill-ride of an action movie starring Liam Neeson, one of my favorite actors. I definitely plan on seeing Taken, and perhaps even Taken 3 when it's released on dvd. I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would want to take Bryan on since his special skills include training Batman, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader, and embodying Aslan, Zeus, and Oskar Schindler. Don't forget, he's a Bad Cop and a member of the A-Team, too!
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