Taken 2: Review By TheFury

-Yes, I'll have the usual turkey and cheese sandwich, but hold the green peppers, mustard, lettuce, BBQ sauce and anything else that would give this meal a personality. Just give me the turkey, the cheese, and some dry, white, untoasted bread.

Got you hungry? Well, you can just go right ahead and start wiping that smooth, wet drool from your mouth; all your getting is a dry product that doesn't come close to the original.

That's basically falls into the same dilemma as Taken 2. The most typical, drawn out, flashback happy sequel with no gift of urgency at any time. This sequel reminds me of those bad sequels from the 80's, such as Ghostbusters 2 and Gremlins 2, effortless and lifeless. Not only does Taken 2 put in any effort to give the plot legs, but they show the most pointless flashbacks I've ever scene. The Saw franchise would be ashamed. There's just a short flashback of the first movie of the daughter getting dragged out from the bed. Seriously, who needed to be reminded of that.

Surprisingly, my problem with Taken 2 isn't the fact that it's exactly the same as Taken, actually it's not a fact, because Taken 2 is nothing like the original. True, characters are taken captive in this movie, but it's more of living up to it's title than doing the same as the first. It has it's own style to it while still feeling like a second parter of the original, which I thought was interesting. When I heard that a Taken 2 was in production, I thought, now how in the world are they gonna do a sequel to this without it being the exact same plot summary. I was very pleased to see that the people involved in this really tried to give you a good installment, even though it was failure, but which is more than I can say for the many sequels of old.

Taken 2 follows Martin Harris played again by Liam Neeson... Oh wait, sorry that's Unknown. Taken 2 follows Zeus, No. Follows John Ottway, N..No! Dammit Liam Neeson you and your gazillion roles. Ah yes, Brian Mills, who's preparing his daughter for her driver's test, which becomes like an obvious set up and weak set up to fact that she will be doing car chases in this movie. Since she was such a bitch from the last movie, Lenore Mill's husband is divorcing her, which brings up a useless storyline of will they or won't they get back together for Brian and Lenore, that I'm still wondering if it really had any conclusion near the end of this movie. Well, VENGEANCE is sought by a group of men lead by that bad guy from season 6 of 24 who you never find out if he lives or dies after getting his arm chopped off, and these are like thee most unprepared revenge seeking people I've ever seen. Notes should have been taken from "the master of revenge" himself, The Punisher. The villains from the first movie were sorry as well, but they'll get a pass because they have no idea of whom they're dealing with, but these guys should have re-thought everything before setting out on this venture. So, they capture Brian and Lenore and take them to a hideout, dragging out this scene just to show how good Brian is by having him focusing in on every sound to pinpoint where he is. Okay, from the first one, we already know how good this guy is so that was entirely pointless, secondly, it's a little unbelievable to me. I'm not saying that living 'hearing breadcrumbs' can't be done but the way he does it feels unrealistic. They took this guy from being a believable highly trained agent into a Treadstone style operative.

Some of the action scenes in this movie look exactly the same. The car chase is pretty fun. The absence of tension was a major flaw in this movie. Taken 2 had no juicy sauces or sp*cy moments. Just a plain old ordinary flick.