Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Admirable film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie again is one of the best pieces of cinema iv'e ever since. Liam Neeson has become my overall favourite actor due to these movies. The plot was just as well executed as the original and every character is unique in their role. I decided to score this a 9 as the fight scenes to me were a bit silly and a bit slapstick. However they are minor things considering the car chase is very well executed and is easily one of the best in action cinema. I really can't express my love for Liam Neeson as the character of Brian. This movie is an absolute beast. Definiatley worth a watch!

Having moderately enjoyed, if finding some faults, the first 'Taken', part of me was hoping for a sequel along similar lines while still having some degree of freshness. Despite that it was reasonably poorly received and, although with notable exceptions, sequels tend to be inferior.Count me in however as another person who was underwhelmed by 'Taken 2'. Not irredeemably awful and there are worse sequels about (naming them would take up a whole review's worth), but 'Taken 2' was a real waste of reasonable potential, considering that it has the always watchable and often very good to great Liam Neeson as the main star. Even those who don't expect much in the first place will find themselves having big problems with the film. Before anybody says anything, am not the sort of person who is always with the general consensus, have been known a fair few times to go against the tide and part of me wanted to do so watching this but the film was just too problematic to enjoy it more and take it for what it was.'Taken 2' is not without good points. Neeson is a strong presence throughout, thoroughly badass yet with some heart. It's photographed slickly and stylishly, some of the imagery thrills and chills. Music is a decent fit while not being intrusive. Some of the action is exciting and thrillingly choreographed, like with the rooftops, and again the violence is uncompromising without being too gratuitously so.However, there are a lot of problems here. Only Neeson gives a halfway decent performance. Famke Janssen has next to nothing to do and doesn't look interested, while Maggie Grace's character was just too annoying and shallow for me to endear to Grace herself or resonate with the father-daughter relationship. Of which there is more of, but to me there was not enough heart or development to it. The rest struggle in very underwritten and stereotypical roles. 'Taken 2' fails to bring the best out of Turkey or make it the star or its own character, in fact it looks cheap and everything is represented in a fashion rife with lazy stereotypes.Dialogue continues to lack clarity and be too over-the-top and the direction this time round lacks rawness and the same amount of momentum, pretty go-through-the-motions. It's the story that is the biggest failure. It is too much of a rehash of the first, except with a more fatigued pace, constant over-familiarity and even more ridiculous far-fetchedness and with wider lapses in logic and sense. Furthermore there is nowhere near the same amount of suspense or excitement. The climax is badly rushed and anti-climactic.Overall, okay but rather tired. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Taken 2 is no where near the first film. Its filled with inconsistencies and silly clichéd situation which don't make any sense at all. Yet somehow, I felt it was an somewhat satisfactory experience thanks to the powerhouse Liam Neeson and some good action. The families of all the Albanian human-traffickers killed by Brian in first film are very angry and are now seeking revenge. This time they try to capture Brian along with his ex-wife Lenore and daughter Kim. But they are successful in capturing only Brian and Lenore. Kim escapes with guidance from her father over his secret cell-phone(which by the looked silly and unrealistic). Now its Kim's job to locate them and then along with her dad kill the bad guys! I liked the way Brian deduces his location with his skills and also didn't mind Kim given the role of savior. Even if on the whole the story maybe rehash of first one, its a bit dynamic in its approach. Liam Neeson is bad-ass as in the first film and action sequences are good again (except the car chases). He is enough reason to give the film some credits. It is still filled with insanely silly things such as Kim learning to drive a gear-shift car out of nowhere or when the bad guys not even torturing Brian or Lenore after kidnapping them. Great Revenge! There is not even person guarding Brian despite knowing the kind of skills he posses and thus he left alone to easily plan his escape. Cool! Taken 2 has its fill of stupidities, yet there were many things I liked. I liked the way they extended the father-daughter relationship and made Kim make up for her rather passive role in first film. The story may be predictably silly at times but I couldn't resist wanting to watch Neeson kick some ass. Taken 2 is an obvious step down from first film but considering kind of horrible sequels we are getting these days in the action genre, it is not so bad. And after watching the Taken 3 recently, Taken 2 feels like an excellent film.RATING: [2.5/5]

Pierre Morel's Taken (2008), a tough, disturbingly xenophobic thriller in which Liam Neeson's grizzled former CIA operative Bryan Mills took down a gang of sleazy criminals in Paris, was hilariously bad. But, in its defence, it was at least hilarious, etching Mills and his 'particular set of skills' into action lore. Taken was a surprise box-office success, igniting the recent wave of codgers- dealing-out-some-old-school-brutality films which the likes of Denzel Washington, Kevin Costner and Sean Penn have embraced to varying success, and proving that audiences still have a thirst for that kind of thing.So inevitably came the sequel, and the producers cannot be blamed for trying to squeeze their new franchise for every penny it's worth before the genre naturally reverts back to straight-to-DVD. What they, as well as the writers and director (franchise-newcomer Olivier Megaton - no, not the infamous Decepticon, though he may have done a better job), can be blamed for, is for putting the audience through the same exact experience again, only without the originality (I use that term loosely) or a coherent action scene. There's plenty of running, punching, kicking, shooting, stabbing etc., but Megaton is so busy waving his camera around and cutting every second that we are left relatively clueless about what is going on, or who anybody is.Not that this matters - unless it's Mills, his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) or his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) - then they're toast, especially if they have thick stubble and are wearing a leather jacket. A gang of Turkish mobsters led by Murad (go-to Eurosleaze Rade Serbedzija) vow vengeance for their brothers and sons who died at the hands of Mills during the events of the first film. After completing a routine security operation in Istanbul, Mills is joined by his ex- wife and daughter for some family time. Only, Mills and Lenore are 'taken', leaving Kim alone to locate her father so he can do what he does best and unleash his special skills on the scumbags.Simply recycling what came before is unforgivable in itself, but going about it in such bland, formulaic and increasingly ridiculous ways make the experience even more torturous. The movie has one simple message - America good, the rest of the world bad. L.A. is shot in glorious sunshine amongst the safety of middle-to-upper class suburbia, while Istanbul consists of dingy alleyways and overweight men puffing cigarettes in cockroach-infested rooms. This casual xenophobia may have waved somewhat if the film delivered any thrills at all, but it doesn't, and fizzles out with a weak climax. Neeson somehow manages to come away from it all unscathed again (and with his wallet no doubt heavier), but his ability to make lines such as "when a dog has a bone, the last thing you want to do is try and take it from him," sound like Oscar-bait does not save Taken 2 from complete disaster.