REVIEW

Taken 2

— Like American filmmakers, it seems the French don’t know when to quit, either. The 2008 revenge thriller Taken now seems like a happy (if loud and violent) accident.

There was something refreshing about seeing brawny Irishman Liam Neeson taking out Eurotrash bad guys the way Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris would, only Neeson can actually convey convincing emotions and he exudes enough gravitas to make viewers believe he’s justified in destroying half of Paris and killing most of the Albanian Mob to save his daughter.

Sadly, retired CIA agent Bryan Mills (Neeson) should probably not have gone to Albania after sending a legion of human traffickers to a permanent sentence. Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) is understandably furious that Mills killed his son during the rescue raid in the French capital. Now Krasniqi is eager to avenge his son’s demise.

He waits until Mills decides to take a temporary security job in Istanbul and then sets a trap for the agent, his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), and his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace).

Naturally, Krasniqi will come to regret this decision. Even though Mills is no longer doing bag jobs for the agency, he’s almost always armed and makes up for what he lacks in firepower with steely determination.

Istanbul is a great setting for a thriller (watch From Russia With Love if you don’t believe). The domes, the towers and cramped streets can make for tense situations even if angry Albanians aren’t shooting at you.

Sadly, screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the team behind the first film, seem to have forgotten what made the first movie engaging, if not terribly plausible. By giving Mills a narrow window to find his daughter in an enormous, congested Paris that seems indifferent to the fate of a teenage girl, the two created some tension to go with the explosions and the car chases in the first movie.

While there are now three people in danger this time, the stakes seem lower because we know that Mills is going to shoot, punch, electrocute or drive his way out of any emergency. Besson and Kamen come up with plenty of crises, but some of them are so outlandish that they make viewers groan instead of gasp.

Unlike his Gallic peers, Besson, who also produced and has given us better films like Leon: The Professional and La Femme Nikita, clearly wants more adrenaline and noise than insights into the human condition.

It’s too bad that he relies on some of the same cliches as the folks in Hollywood. There isn’t much suspense if you know how Mills is going to get out of the jams that Besson and Krasniqi put him in.

Neeson and Serbedzija do give it their all, but something’s missing between the able stars and the great backdrop.

It’s called a story.

Taken 2 72 Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, D.B.

Sweeney, Luke Grimes, Rade Serbedzija Director: Olivier Megaton Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sensuality Running time: 91 minutes

MovieStyle, Pages 36 on 10/05/2012

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