Taken 2

Taken was directed by Pierre Morel who had no experience with direction. But Morel was responsible for the cinematography of Transporter 1 and 2. The fetish of the producers of the franchise with Transporter stays. This time, they have taken to (all pun intended), the director of Transporter 3 – Olivier Megaton. The fact that both names – Pierre and Olivier – sound French, is not the only similarity I guess.

Olivier would have know for certain that he had big shoes to fill in when he picked up Taken 2. Taken was an absolutely edge of the seat drama that most of us would have enjoyed. So if Mr. Olivier had just stuck to the drama and the thrill that he is used to creating (Transporter 3, Colombiana), Taken 2 should have been a walk in the park. But I guess the expectation was too huge and it comes up just that bit short on Taken.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is back with his obsessively protective behavior – one really cannot blame him for that considering the events that took place in Paris not too long back. But Kim (Maggie Grace) is now nearing adulthood and already has a boyfriend Jamie (Luke Grimes). Much as Lenore (Famke Janssen) asks her ex-husband not to interfere, his natural self gets the better of Bryan.

Simultaneously, a bunch of Albanians led by Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) is plotting revenge. Revenge on Bryan for killing Murad’s son – Marko – in Paris. And as the poster says very subtly – They picked the wrong guy to seek revenge. So the setting moves from Paris to the extremely rustic and beautiful Istanbul with loads of bylanes which form a luscious recipe for inch perfect car chases.

Taken 2 – as mentioned earlier & as the lady on the seat behind me in the theatre commented was definitely not as good as Taken 1. One of the several reasons could be the fact that it took a long while to get to the part of being “Taken”. Add to that, the aspect of age having caught up with Mr. Neeson dramatically over the past 2 years and the hand to hand combat sequences seemed distinctly slower than the previous occasion.

Taken 2 also had some finishing issues with some clear consistency errors. It just didn’t seem to fit as well. I also have a basic question related to physics. If sound takes 4 seconds to travel then @ 340 m/s the distance should be 1540 meters i.e. 1.5 kms right? Why the, does Bryan, ask Kim to draw a circle of 4.5 kms when tracking him down? Would love to understand that.

As such, Taken 2 is definitely worth a dekko and if you haven’t seen the first part then you will enjoy it. But overall, it comes up as a 6 on 10 in my books.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1529652505/