Taken 2

Okay, this will be a little clumsy to start, but let's open with Taken 2, sure to be the big winner this weekend.  To begin, Taken 2 is a rip snorting good time.  It is full of action, action, action.  Car chases, foot chases, rooftop chases, more foot cases, more car chases and ass whupping fights.  I was thoroughly entertained watching it and had a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, that's about it.

Taken 2 starts a couple years after Taken takes place.  It still has Liam Neeson, who, at 60, appears to be the biggest action hero in Hollywood, or at least the most intense anyway.  He still is the doting father of his teenage daughter, and still estranged from his hot ex-wife, played by Famke Jannson.  You may remember her as Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye, the coldest killer with the oddest fetishes.  In this outing, she has separated from her rich, new husband, and sorta appears to be reconciling with our hero.  He gets a quick security job in Istanbul, and asks her if she and their daughter would like to join him there after the job is finished.  They agree, and the plot spirals away from there.

For those of you who saw Taken, we all know that Liam broke up a group of very nasty group of Albanian white slavers who kidnapped his daughter in Paris to sell to mean arab sheiks who appear to have less than honorable intentions.  Well, even nasty slavers, it seems, have family who loves them  and these nasty slavers are no exception.  One of the dead ones had a dad, played by Rade Serbedzija, Hollywood's go-to guy when they need a safe, foreign-sounding bad guy so the producers don't seem racist.  It turns out that he is very angry and sad Liam killed his kid and vows revenge by kidnapping his wife and daughter to kill and "sell to the lowest brothel" respectively to punish our hero.  Then kill him in a most gruesome way.  The rest of the movie after that is all sound and thunder.

Now, I really liked the original Taken, despite its racist undertones.  It has a little of everything, action, suspense, drama, pathos, even topicality with the human trafficking angle.  Its strength comes from the fact that Liam Neeson is not your standard action hero.  Quite the opposite, actually.  He has clear motivation, saving his daughter, and even a bit of an arc, where he and his daughter change a little on the other side.  In other words, it "feels" real.  There is not too much straining the bounds of reality, or at least the perceived bounds of reality.  Unfortunately, between the time it took to make Taken and Taken 2, something awful happened.  Liam Neeson became an action star.  Also, during that time, because they like the box office an action hero brings in, they decided to make an action movie.  See, the first was more of a mystery, noirish-type of deal.  We were with him every step of the way, tracking the bad guys with scraps of information most people would overlook, sort of like MacGuyver meets Sherlock Holmes.  We have tense moments, betrayal by his friend, and then HE is on the lam.  And in the end, you don't know if he will save his daughter or not.  Taken 2, there is never any doubt.  It is a by the numbers actioner, with no real soul or excitement because we've all seen it before and there's nothing new.

It's sad, because this could have been another great film instead of a good one.  Most of the films this summer were similar, from Bourne to Batman to The Expendibles.  Tragic, missed opportunities that really could have surpassed the mark.  Only The Avengers seems to have escaped this fate, but just barely.  One can only hope Bond's new outing, Skyhook, will buck this trend.  But I am not optimistic.  Hollywood is nothing, if not responsive, to fans and their wallets, and the brain dead fanboys are already clamoring for more gadgets, and where's Q?

You'll probably note that in my description of the plot, it sounds like I'm reading off a stale, worn story, and that's what this is, a comfortable, old shoe.  The stupid description is deliberate, because it is a stupid story.  But, I guess, what can we expect?  I was hoping something a little closer to the first.  Everything in this movie is simple.  Simple plot, simple bad guys, simple feelings.  There is nothing complicated at all.  While this movie attempts to give the bad guy depth by giving him motivation, it is still a simple caricature.  This is why the first movie is a tad racist, and the way you can judge that is:  Can the plot still function if you plug anyone else in there?  If so, you have a caricature, and usually a bad one.  This is lazy writing at best and sinister at its worst. Most people know there are bad people all over the world; they are not focused in Europe or Asia or anywhere else for that matter.  Just because a story is undemanding is not an excuse for lazy characterization.  Ultimately, the best movies are those that have the best characters, good and bad.  They have to be believable. They anchor us to the story by giving us something with which to identify, or at least understand.  This is critical in movies, especially ones that ask us to believe fairly unbelievable things, like sci-fi, fantasy or action movies.

So, that's a long way to say that Taken 2 is fun, entertaining, but ultimately hollow.  If you want to turn your brain off and go with the flow, this is your flick.  If you want something meatier, rematch the original.  2.5 stars out of 4.