Taken 2: Taut thriller 2

Starring: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace
At: PVR & others
Rated: 7/10
I am a Liam Neeson fan so I like whatever he does on screen  — even if it means he is acting in a veritable repeat. Taken 2 looks and feels like its prequel — only, it is far less than the original.
Having said that, it still holds on to your interest, getting into a zone of relentless action without losing time or footage. Not the gory kind but the somewhat old-fashioned one — hand to hand fights, all bullets by the hero finding their target and all by the enemy going astray! There’s a kidnapping too which tantalisingly flirts with the knife but does not cut and scrape or take lives. The proceedings are peppered with a lot of car chases on pebbled alley-ways of Istanbul. There’s a bit of family reunion too and the subject is not new but takes you ahead in the same saga of an ex-CIA operative’s daughter being kidnapped by human traffickers and his gun-them-down vow that made huge money with the original.
In this sequel, the Albanians he had murdered for indulging in woman slavery, throw up a father and some uncles out to avenge the killings by Liam. They choose to forget their progenies’ sins. They want the man — and his family — who killed these bad guys to be brought alive to the grave sight in an Albanian nook and get into the earth as bodybags. Well, with Liam around, this ain’t happening as they should have known — but they don’t — and so you have a taut thriller 2 to go to.
Source: Published in The Sunday Pioneer, October 14. 2012


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