Review: Taken 2

Release date: 4 October 2012
Certificate: 12A
Director: Olivier Megaton
Starring: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace

What's the story?
Four years on from stopping his daughter (Grace) being sold as a sex slave, retired CIA agent Bryan Mills (Neeson) is taken prisoner by the relatives of the hoodlums responsible.

What did we think?
Neither as fun, violent nor original as its predecessor, Taken 2 will only please those who didn't get enough of Neeson's tough guy act the last time around. It's also slow to get going, the entire first third setting up a confrontation that, when it arrives, isn't worth waiting for.

In a couple of weeks we'll see Daniel Craig tearing up Istanbul in the eagerly awaited Skyfall. Before Bond, though, the Turkish city gets some strife from Bryan, otherwise known as Liam Neeson in a second outing for Taken's ageing action man.

That film, you'll remember, saw Liam's former CIA operative use his very particular set of skills to track down the vile sex traffickers who abducted his daughter and send them back to Albania in body bags. This time around the Albanians are after him, the upshot of which means it's the turn of his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) to spring him from the villains' evil clutches.

That's a moderately interesting reversal that could have made for an intriguing second instalment. Alas, director Olivier Megaton swiftly loses faith in it, choosing instead to have a quickly liberated Liam chased from pillar to post by a seemingly inexhaustible army of bad guys he has absolutely no trouble despatching.

That would be fine if Taken 2 had maintained the level of brutal intensity established in the first film. Bafflingly, though, the violence has been significantly watered down, resulting in a movie practically hell-bent on being a shadow of its former self.

Verdict: Mis-taken.