Taken-2: A Sequence That Keeps on Taking Your Attention

It's a common belief that a consequence to a movie would not be any good with an exception of just a few films that have proven to be not as bad as the first movie. Say, Meet The Parents - Meet The Fockers did live up to our expectations, and maybe even more. Say, Agent 007. But that's from another category of the sequence movies - it's like a new movie every time they make a 'sequence', beautiful women change, villains change and even James Bond, once in a decade - changes.

However, for the most part, as a general rule, one expects very little from the sequence, especially when the first movie was about the human trafficking and sex slavery, who would want to see the sequence to it? What's else new could have been done for the second part - a new villain? A new victim? A new  hero?

Taken-2 - a sequence to the blockbuster success Taken - is a movie that has it all: love, action, family and - the locale!Although, this is definitely not the movie to promote this locale, it's not your Under The Tuscan Sun and/or Midnight in Paris...

Set in Istanbul, Turkey, the movie picks up where it ends - Liam Neeson chasing the bad Eastern European guys, or - the Albanians, to be exact.

A bit older, but no less charismatic and athletic, Liam Neeson can still play an action figure, although, he is already rather above the average age to play the leading action figures in Hollywood and only top of the top Hollywood action actors can manage to score a leading role in an action movie at the age past 50. (Liam Neeson turned 60 last June!) These would be a handful of the actors - the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Sylvester Stallone. Despite the fact that Neeson has mentioned in some interview before the movie premier that he's not feeling as strong anymore and that it took him more effort, more training and more strength to play the action scenes in Taken-2, he still does posses the action 'aura'. Maybe, because he is a good actor and is still an attractive man.

So, Bryan Mills, the retired CIA agent (played by Liam Neeson) goes off to Istanbul for work - the kind of work that requires his most top security skills. He's appointed to be a security guard to a high profile official, and before he goes away, we learn that he's no longer married and that his teenage girl is old enough to have a boyfriend.

As he visits his daughter for the driving lessons - apparently she still does not have her license, which, being in LA, is a bit hard to belief - he learns that his wife, played by Famke Janssen, is in the middle of the split with her new husband and that she is not really happy. As a good sign to a possibility to rebuild their once passionate, loving relationship, he invites his wife and his daughter to come with him to Istanbul. And they agreed to come…

Little did they know that what could have been a family-reunion slash romantic getaway would turn into a nightmare!

Somewhere in the deep mountains and woods of Albania - just another good example of how Hollywood portrays small countries - an old man, played by the Croatian actor Rade Šerbedžija (and who always ends up portraying Eastern European villains in Hollywood) swears to find Neeson and kill him and, perhaps, even his family, to revenge for the death of his son, whom Neeson, among the other few people, kills in Taken.

Neeson's character kills those Albanian men because they were dirty scumbags, who kidnapped young girls and sold them to sex slavery. How else would you deal with the criminals who not only steal and destroy the lives of the innocent, but who destroy the lives of their relatives? If you were Brian Mills, an ex CIA agent, you'd kill them. Especially, if they kidnap and drug up your own teenage daughter.

So, he kills them to save  her and the other girls. And now the relatives of those killed criminals decide to find Neeson and revenge. They track him down in Istanbul and what could have been a second honeymoon for Neeson and his estranged wife, the exotic journey becomes a nightmare of kidnapping, torture, and killings.

The fans of blood, martial arts, combat, and Eastern European accents would get it all in one movie, plus - a whole lot of Liam Neeson too.

I don't know if it's the mood I was in when I watched Taken-2 or the fact that I did like the first movie, or the fact that I've always been a big fan of Liam Neeson, but I did like the sequence.

I didn't find it genius, but I didn't find it to be decently done. Even the chasing scenes in Istanbul, which I always watch with a bit of humor and sarcasm as they always end up looking very Hollywood-y for the reason that there's no way one can drive a car 100 mph an hour on a very narrow street filled with street merchants and residents and not kill anyone, but it's not the first movie that does it and I've already accepted that fake reality long time ago.

P.S. And, I wasn't surprised when his daughter finally passed her driving license exam upon the return from Istanbul. After the car chase in Istanbul, where she was the driver - yes, you've heard me - I would have doubted she would have had any issues with the LA DMW.

What the trailer here: