Taken 2

This is gonna be a weird one to talk about. I mean, even though every bad action movie and their brother gets a sequel these days, was Taken 2 really expected. The first Taken was its own thing; it had a unique tory and a badass main character, and it ended without a cliffhanger. There wasn't much wiggle room: what would your Taken sequel even be about? Who would be kidnapped, and who would rescue them? Liam Neeson again? Why? Well, somebody answered these questions, because here's Taken 2; it's really real. I wish they'd left it alone. When good-old Brian (Liam Neeson) brings his ex-wife Lenora (Famke Janssen) and his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) to Istanbul for a vacation, he (literally) puts his guns in the closet and is ready to have some fun. Reconciliations and cute conversations are abound; Brian even seems to accept his daughter's serious relationship back home. That is of course, until the family of the Albanian traffickers from the first movie and kidnaps Brian and Lenora. Kim helps Brian to escape, but the baddies escape with Lenora. Now, Brian needs to get her back...2. If I'm going to judge Taken 2, and I absolutely am, I'm gonna have to forgive the fact that it's incredibly dumb. Because come on, nobody was gonna attempt an intelligent and complex sequel to Taken. And even if someone did, they wouldn't have succeeded. So yes, I can forgive the silliness. However, I absolutely cannot forgive how cheap, boring, and lazy Taken 2 is. Every expense was spared, every shortcut was Taken; so much so that it would be hard to make a worse version. Liam Neeson is apparently a teleporter, Albanian terrorists only speak English, the clearly twenty-something Maggie Grace apparently doesn't have her driver's license yet, it's a mess. Absolutely nothing many any damn sense. Not even the action, literally the only thing director Olivier Megaton had to deliver on, is any good. For some reason Liam Neeson does all his own fights, and he's no Tom Hardy, so all of the kung-fu is very jerky and boring. Megaton also decided to up close and with tons of cuts, so it's very disorienting and hard to follow. There are even scenes where Neeson kills bad guys by just kind of pushing them over. And it's just as bad in the ludicrous car chases and the gunfights, when somebody can shoot in the wrong direction and still hit someone dead on. The script is just so bad and none of the actors put in any effort; it's really frustrating how little work went into Taken 2. Seriously though, Taken 2 is awful. I didn't expect much from the film, and I didn't really want anything out of it. But this is just so...lame. Like I said earlier, this really is the most barebones sequel they could've done. Keep in mind there was no chance this would be a good movie, but it could have at least been kind of fun. At least it could've been entertaining. Taken 2 is exactly the opposite; it's dumb, boring, terribly made, nonsensical, ridiculous, and strangely trippy. As goofy as the first Taken was, at least it kept my attention. This does nothing of the sort; don't let it Taken your money.