When last we saw Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) he had just finished his own European version of Sherman's March to the Sea, having cut a wide and bloody swath through the corrupt underbelly of Paris in a single-minded quest to retrieve his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from Eastern European human traffickers. Lots of Balkan types died at his hands, as well as a gaggle of Middle Eastern security men charged with protecting the Sultan of Molestia along with the Sultan himself. In the end though nobody seemed the worse for wear and everyone resumed their lives as if nothing had happened.
Everyone named Mills that is. Because as "Taken 2" opens we're witness to a mass funeral being held on a hillside in Albanian. Seems all those human traffickers Mills dispatched with such alacrity in the first film had family and those family members are none too thrilled to qualify for the "Bury 6 and the 7th one's free!" discount over at Corpse Boxes R Us. One older gentleman in particular has allowed Mills to crawl up his behind and fester and as a result of his discomfort vows revenge on Mills in front of the assembled mourners. And there is your plot. All that's left to do now is bring the combatants together and let the fun begin.
In order to do that we find Mr Mills has had to go to Istanbul where he's apparently charged with handling security for a visiting Middle Eastern type. Before he leaves for Turkey however he spends some time consoling his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) who has just been dumped by her meal ticket, uh, I mean her wealthy husband. Mills suggests she and Kim visit him in Istanbul and they'll make a holiday out of it that'll help her forget her troubles.
So back to Istanbul. Lenore and Kim arrive as do the angry Albanians and before the ladies have had a chance to recover from their jet lag Lenore and Bryan are taken and it's up to Kim to help her father engineer his own escape. I won't go into the bloody details of how events unfold from here because if I did there'd be nothing else to talk about. As I said up front there aren't any hidden meanings or philosophical undercurrents at work here. This is straight up Charles Bronson, Dirty Harry "I'm going to kill you and the audience is going to cheer" film making.
While the best adjective to describe the original film would be "raw", "stylized" would be a more appropriate word to describe what director Oliver Megaton has created here. All those raw edges from the first film - the graphic torture, the overdosing prostitutes, the decadant Arabian perverts - have been sanded down and polished up until what we have here is lots of "Transporter" style combat-dancing, fuzzy, almost impressionistic shots of Lenore in distress and "good" Arabs who reward Mills' professionalism in the traditional style; with a thick bonus envelope.
This being a Luc Besson production however the stylization is handled discreetly and the film never actually devolves into parody. While you certainly have to be aware that a fight choreographer is standing just off-camera during the hand to hand combat sequences, they are so viscerally charged that it doesn't matter. While it might have added another level of dread and loathing of the bad guys in my heart to actually see Lenore abused in some way, I'm glad the film makers opted for restraint. Same with the brains spattering on the wall etc. This is not The Godfather Part II where the film maker is making an existential statement about Vito's milieu and the choices he feels he must make to escape it. It's an action movie pure and simple and if it's going to indulge in gratuitous excess that excess should be of the action variety, not the sadistic variety.
Liam Neeson has said he doesn't see where the franchise could possibly go from here but frankly I see a world of possibilities simply because, in Bryan Mill's line of work, there's always a chance that one of your charges might get taken. It doesn't always have to be the wife and daughter who get taken while on vacation.
As far as Taken 2 goes; production values are high, the cast is first rate, the fight scenes and car chases through Istanbul are exciting and in the very end there's just a tiny scene that pretty effectively demonstrates the difference between "good" and "evil", as envisioned by the film makers. Don't blink or you'll miss it.
