Film Review: Taken 2

Taken 2. Rated M (violence). 92 minutes. Directed by Olivier Megaton. Screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.

Verdict: Guns, guns and more guns star in this toxic little sideshow of brutally stark propaganda about whose family means more.

What ends up being most interesting about this morally bankrupt little piece of work is the extent to which one can chart the collapse of Hollywood’s moral and cultural codes by the collapse of Liam Neeson’s career as an actor. The man who brought us the extraordinarily thoughtful, considered and culturally relevant characters of Oskar Schindler (Schindler’s List), Michael Collins (Michael Collins) and Alfred Kinsey (Kinsey) has been reduced to a vengeful, shoot-em-up action hero – and the result is as gruesome as it is tiresome. If there was ever to be the moment to mourn the passing of the well-made, meaningful, epic human drama, then this toxic little sideshow is it.

When Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) buries most of his relatives on a hilltop in Turkey, he vows revenge on the man who killed them all – Bryan Mills (Neeson). When Bryan, quite stupidly in retrospect, invites his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) to holiday with him in Istanbul, Murad’s henchmen kidnap Lenore and use her to lure Bryan to his death, while also managing to chase Kim across the rooftops of the Turkish capital in an effort to stop her throwing hand grenades all over the place and ruining all the other tourists’ photo opportunities.

Picking up where Taken (2008) left off, the only moment of genuine interest in Besson (The Fifth Element, Taken) and Kamen’s (The Fifth Element, The Power of One, Gladiator) screenplay is when Murad and Bryan have a brief scene about whose child is more important. In the first film, Murad’s son (and most of his friends) was murdered by Bryan because they kidnapped and appallingly mistreated his daughter.

Megaton’s (Transporter 3) vision for the film is almost exclusively a kind of visual poverty that will do for Turkey’s tourism industry what Wolf Creek did for ours. The choppy editing, courtesy of Camille Delamarre (Transporter 3) and Vincent Tabaillon (Transporter 2, Clash of the Titans), will have you scrambling for the Nurofen zesty plus when you get home (if you can wait that long).

The sickening brutality of the scene when Bryan might finally settle the score with Murad (so his daughter might get back to her driving lessons) is sickeningly final. You might also question whether propaganda films masquerading as human drama are actually useful in the hostile climate of disrespect for our many cultural differences that are playing out in real time around the globe.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.