Take Your Hard-Earned Money and See A Different Movie This Weekend: Our Review of "Taken 2" (2012)

Directed By: Olivier Megaton (Columbiana) 

Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sensuality

Run Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Synopsis: Some time after Bryan Mills (Neeson) saved his daughter Kim (Grace) from being kidnapped in Paris by a sex slave operation and all seems well, he invites them to vacation with him in Turkey after his finishes a bodyguard job. What he doesn’t plan on is family members of the Albanian gangsters he killed in the first movie coming after him to exact revenge for his actions.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Last night Sarah and I braved the middle and high schoolers that congregate at the local multiplex on Friday nights (shouldn’t there be high school football going on???) to see this weekend’s new action film Taken 2. The sequel to 2008’s surprise Taken, it sees the return of Liam Neeson to his role as ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills. This time instead of his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), being kidnapped it is he and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) who are kidnapped and Kim has to help save them.

So this was one I think we were both kind of looking forward to mainly because Taken is plain awesome and I guess it was an assumption that a sequel made by essentially the same crew as the first one would be just as badass.

Sarah: Well the first one was surprisingly scary, too, because Kim is taken in Paris which is not usually considered a dangerous city. I mean, every city has it’s dangerous parts, but she’s abducted and sold into sex slavery. That’s terrifying!

Taken 2, however, is a pure revenge movie where the father of one of the Albanian’s Bryan killed wants to kidnap him and his family and bring him back to Albania for justice.

Let’s do this a little bit differently and I’m going to let you start by telling me what YOU thought of this one.

A: To be quite honest, I wasn’t impressed. I really wanted to like it because I love the first one and I assumed this one would just be mindless fun. And at times it is, but for the most part it’s actually quite tedious because there are very slight variances between this one and the original, but not enough actual excitement or originality to make me enjoy it. Honestly I was bored a lot of the time we were watching this.

Yeah, Liam Neeson is still pretty badass as Bryan Mills. Too bad he doesn't do too many cool things like this in Taken 2.

Our Preview of This Week's New Releases (for Friday, October 5th)

Andrew: Hello readers! It's time again for a preview of this week's new theatrical releases! This week we don't have a large number of wide releases with only Taken 2, the sequel to the 2008 surprise hit action film Taken, and Tim Burton's new animated movie, Frankenweenie, which is coming out in time for Halloween.

There are some limited release films coming out as well such as Butter, The Paperboy and V/H/S but none of those are hitting our neck of the woods. That said, another limited release film that is increasing to more screens this weekend in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and you can read our five-clapboard review of that right here.

So Sarah, with only a couple of films to talk about, let's get down to it and talk intimately about Taken 2. Directed by Olivier Megaton, who directed last year’s fun Zoe Saldana action flick Columbiana and the third entry in the Jason Statham Transporter series, Taken 2 sees the return of Liam Neeson to the role of ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills.

If anyone's been living under a rock the last few years, in the original film Mills' daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), is kidnapped while on vacation in Paris by an Albanian sex trade ring and Mills goes on a rampage through Paris to get here back. In a word, it's awesome.

Sarah, all I'm looking for with this sequel is that it's just a badass. I'm expecting a pretty similar story but if the action is on par with the original, I'll be a happy man. It's written by Luc Besson, the somewhat legendary French filmmaker/writer who wrote the first one, so hopefully it'll be good.