“What are you going to do?” – “What I do best!”
In 2008 a great producer Luc Besson with a help of writer Robert Mark Kamen created the ex-agent with the particular set of skills named Bryan Mills, and exactly this character from the Taken movie made Liam Neeson a popular action star and helped to collect $226,830,568 worldwide.
No wonder that we all were waiting for a Taken 2 while Liam Neeson has been improving himself as an action star in The A-Team, Unknown and The Grey movies. And on October 5, 2012, thankfully to Luc Besson and his directorial protege Olivier Megaton, everybody run to the nearest cinema to check out a sequel.
After events of the first Taken movie where he did find and did kill kidnappers, ex-CIA Bryan Mills lives a life of a bodyguard to one VIP in Istanbul, meanwhile staying close to his ex-wife and daughter, but a vengeful dad of one of those Balkan heavies from the first Taken is going to pay him a really tough visit.
This time Maggie Grace has more screen time and helps daddy to ascertain his location with grenades destroying Turkey’s historic architecture. Actually, I was expecting to see his friends helping him to solve this problem with kidnapping, but Besson decided that Liam is “one man army” to take care of that by himself.
Car chase around Istanbul is a really great piece of stunt work (special thanks to Michel Julienne, car stunts coordinator) and reminded Transporter 3 on which Olivier Megaton worked in 2008.
What about fights? Turkish bath showdown with Sherbedgia’s chief goon played by Alain Figlarz is the best part of this movie in my opinion. Alain Figlarz is a stunt coordinator of Taken 2 and worked before on Colombiana as a fight choreographer, Largo Winch, and The Bourne Identity.
Taken 2 still has a drive and a sense of urgency as a ‘must have’ in all Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s co-authored works. Of cause it is not so well made as to the first movie but still on the same level and makes you stick to a screen hungry for the next action of the ex-agent with the particular set of skills.
Bryan doesn’t have time for bulls#!t, and the movie, clocking in at a lean 90 minutes…, at the end he is saying to Balkanian dad “I’m getting tired”… but it is hard to believe. Taken 2 already collected $136,728,371 worldwide.
“I’ll bet any amount of money next week I’m going to get a phone call and we’re going to start talking about Taken 3.” – Robert Mark Kamen
