They're family again, and all is well, until he notices that their car is being followed. Mills is pleased, because his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) seems to be coming back around to him, and their daughter (Maggie Grace) is there, too. It all starts as just a little vacation in Istanbul, which looks stunning. For good measure, he instructs her to "Be casual." He instructs her to go into his suitcase, take out two hand grenades and a gun, and go to the roof to await a second phone call.
To give one example of how effective this can be, take the scene in which Neeson, chained up down in some hellish basement by the traffickers, sneaks out a call to his teenage daughter. The movie commits to the character of Bryan Mills just as Neeson does, unflinchingly, with no compromise, irony or winking at the audience.
If you see the movie, this is something worth noticing: As much as this picture is action driven - virtually conceived as a series of interlocking, escalating sequences - its greatest delights are grounded in personality, in the fun of having a protagonist who combines homespun values with velociraptor functionality. Time is lavished only on the things that matter.Īnd in "Taken 2" the things that matter have all to do with character. When it's just a plot point, the information gets tossed out as fast and as forcefully as possible.
Indeed, they decide to take their revenge about two lines into the screenplay, which is just the first example of why "Taken 2" is like a textbook on how to make beautiful, successful and highly satisfying junk-food cinema. In the sequel, the Albanians are grieving over their dead - lots and lots of dead - and decide that it's payback time. In the original, Albanian slave traffickers abducted his daughter (big mistake). "Taken 2" is the sequel to "Taken," the utterly irresistible 2009 thriller that introduced Neeson as an action star in the Harrison Ford vein, that of the fellow who's seemingly normal and reasonable - just don't get him mad. They keep showing up and forcing him to kill them. He wants to talk about basketball with his buddies and put his violent past as a lethal CIA operative behind him. In "Taken 2," poor Liam Neeson doesn't ask for much out of life, just a chance to worry over his teenage daughter, like an old fusspot, and maybe get back with his ex-wife. Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace.