Magali Bragard
Liam Neeson is back as Bryan Mills in ‘Taken2,’ and ready for some payback.
“Taken 2” has a plot that could have been written by a GPS program, and contains all the technical charm that conjures up.
Yet somehow, Liam Neeson growls through this just-acceptable action sequel with his dignity intact, his wallet bigger and his movie family oblivious to all that occurred in 2009’s “Taken.”
A long first act gets into the rhythm of Bryan Mills’ (Neeson) life as a divorced Los Angeles dad. It’s pretty dull, despite Mills being a superdeadly ex-CIA killer. He wants to help daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) with a driving test, gets upset she has a boyfriend and checks in with his former wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen). Another divorce leaves poor Lenore and Kim without a vacation, so Bryan invites them to come with him on a job in Istanbul.
Bad idea. A superdeadly ex-CIA guy should know better. The white-slaving Albanian thugs who tried to abduct Kim in the first film have vowed to get the man who killed their brothers, and easily scope out the family’s hotel. From there it’s a rotating game of grab-the-Mills, as first Kim is taken, then Lenore and Bryan. Later Bryan escapes to find Kim, then saves Lenore, dispatching Albanians as he goes.
Director Olivier Megaton (no, he’s not a Transformer, just a French film director working for producer and co-writer Luc Besson) winds up “Taken 2” and lets it roll. The fight sequences are sped up — it’s easier to gloss over 60-year-old Neeson’s physical limitations that way. But the movie’s kick comes from watching Mills figure his way out of tough spots.
That can get tedious. Sometimes, “Taken 2” seems like a “Get Smart”-like spoof in which long passages are spent with Mills telling Kim, through a tiny phone, how to throw grenades onto rooftops. (A car chase with Kim behind the wheel never riffs on the earlier driving-test shtick.)
But Neeson, as he proved in “The Grey,” can still make these paycheck roles fun, especially when facing Yugoslav actor Rade Serbedzija. It’s an old-guy-on-old-guy smackdown, and though it won’t get pulses racing, perhaps it’s enough to make the Mills gang consider Disney World the next time they want to get away.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NydnRss/~3/S_xttCjI5b4/story01.htm
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