Review by Matt Finley
TAKEN the first was a passably
enjoyable action flick because it trafficked in a sort of
skull-crunching fat-free momentum, wearing all of its sentimentally
out on its sleeve and never getting bogged down with things like
complex characterization or marginal believability. We connect to
Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) simply because his teenaged daughter, Kim
(Maggie Grace), has been kidnapped by sex traffickers. And, as the
movie unspools, we watch him posed as a DEATH WISHian
Bronsonesque hero with Jack Bauer spy skillz, consumed with vigilante
tunnel vision.
It’s fun, in an appropriately
American (read: jaded and self-obsessed) kinda way – he couldn’t
be bothered to bring down the trafficking ring, cut all the girls
loose, blow-up the base and jetpack into the sunset… instead, he
shoulder-checks his way through brothel-loads of k-holed innocents
without a second thought until he reaches his own progeny and strolls
whistling home, leaving the rest of the suffering to languish ‘til
such a time as their own fathers deigned to heave themselves off the
couch and muster their own berserker rampages.
But I’m here to talk about TAKEN 2
(for the record, I would’ve preferred TAKENS). Spawned
by TAKEN writers Luc Besson and Mark Robert Kamen, and
director Olivier Megaton (COLUMBIANA), the film makes misstep
after misstep, criminally misjudging the strengths of its predecessor
while systematically amplifying all of its flaws.
In imagining an apt TAKEN
sequel, my earlier DEATH WISH comparison seems all the more
appropriate – why not just allow Neeson to neck-snap and pistol
whip his way through an escalatlingly ridiculous series of rollicking
corset-tight bullet-riddled inanities? But no, TAKEN 2 saves
Neeson’s intense, captivating savagery for the tepid third act,
counting on the antics of Albanian mob boss Murad Hoxha (Rade
Šerbedžija) and daughter Kim to keep the audience rapt.
So, remember the anonymous now-iced
Albanian takers from the first movie? Well, one of their father’s
is a big-time crime monger who has sworn revenge on Bryan Mills and
his family. Mills, meanwhile, is still trying to insinuate himself
back into said family unit’s good graces. After his ex-wife
Lenore’s (Famke Janssen) new hubby turns bastard, he invites both
Lenore and Kim to join him in Istanbul, where he has just completed a
high-end security job. Cue Murad and the Albanian mob, who find them
and successfully kidnap the ‘rents, leaving it up to veteran victim
Kim to free her pappy so he can commence with the rump-punting.
It fails for a number of reasons:
1.
These Albanian tween-purloiners weren’t built to be compelling
villains. They’re badass-posturing ciphers – the sort of faceless
vessels for xenophobic paranoia that we oh so love seeing reduced to
guts, clots and bone meal. What makes the first film fun is
watching their jaws drop as their ho-hum sex kidnapping routine is
shattered by a veritable Tasmanian devil of heat-packing middle-aged
fatherhood. Now that we’ve established Mills’ acumen for
exaggerated violence, he warrants a nemesis with a little pizzazz or,
at the very least, a cheap idiosyncrasy or two (maybe a metal
thumbnail or like he’s always eating pretzel sticks or something).
I understand (oh how we all understand so stop hammering it in
already) that this blandly overweight mob heavy is a father himself,
also seeking revenge on behalf of a wronged child, but he lacks the
force of personality - or even screentime - required to serve as
a worthy foil.
2.
The film flips the pursuit / chase dynamic. TAKEN is fun
because not only does Mills dispense beatdown upon beatdown, he’s
also the pursuer, hunting down each ludicrous toe-to toe with the
speed and focus of a heat-seeking missile. Here, Mills and his family
are the pursued. Until way past the one-hour mark, there’s no great
battle-cry for the audience to issue, no war horns to blow, just a
series of hum-drum chases and escapes that provide little to root
for. It doesn’t help that Megaton attempts to mimic the fight-style
of Paul Greengrass’ two BOURNE films, burying Mills’
few violent triumphs in a flutter of inept close cuts and the played
out shimmy-shakes endemic to lazy modern fight sequences.
3.
The setting …and I don’t mean Istanbul. Certainly a city so rich
in history and varied in culture has plenty to offer in the way of
opulence, squalor and all points in between. But aside for some token
flyover shots and skyline views, the film limits itself to
paint-peeling hallways and municipal ruin – the sort of
dressing-stripped tenements through which countless tactical teams
have chased myriad terrorists in any number of post 9/11
pseudo-verite action flicks. Even its climax, for which the first
film saved a secret elevator and hedonistic human auction, is framed
within a vacant marble bathhouse, almost daring comparisons to the
vastly superior EASTERN PROMISES.
Credit where credit’s due – there’s
an amusing bit featuring blasé grenade-tossing, and a car chase
that’s precisely mediocre, but none of it’s enough to
substantially sweeten the pot.
If I went into the first film with zero
expectations and left pleasantly surprised, TAKEN 2 was
actively disappointing. I’m curious as to how the filmmakers so
thoroughly misconstrued the strengths of the original. TAKEN
is an almost perfect distillation (or maybe For-Dummying ) of the
best bits of Besson’s directorial work – artfully Frenchified
American action paired with head-smackingly Americanized French
melodrama. But I’d feel bad ascribing any cultural particularities
to the drab fumblings of its sequel. French artifice, American nitro,
Albanian sex murder… what does it matter? It’s as bland and
forgettable as the worst of all three. Well… the worst of the first
two. A forgettable one of the third would probably be the best one of
those. (1 out of 4 Stars)
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