Taken 2

"In Istanbul, retired CIA operative Bryan Mills and his wife are taken hostage by the father of a kidnapper Mills killed while rescuing his daughter."

- Taken 2 (2012), IMDB

While I enjoyed this film I did have an issue with it. In the beginning the mother is going through a divorce with her husband for the previous film, now I understand that they wanted to get on to the action as soon as possible but I feel that they should have taken more time to really explain why. It felt rushed and kind of threw me off because of how sudden it seemed. It would have also made the resurrecting relationship between Bryan Mills and his ex-wife a bit more plausible. Instead it seemed to me that the writers divorced Lenore from her husband just to have Bryan and Lenore together in the end. I also did not enjoy Lenore wasting time when her and Bryan are being chased in the limo, but that is just a personal opinion and I feel like that scene was written to build suspense and make it seem more fast-paced.

Having said that I did enjoy the sweet irony of how the daughter has yet to get her license in the U.S. but in Istanbul she can drive like nobody's business. Only problem with that scene is how the dialogue was just filler to the movie; the dialogue kept repeating everything that they had said in the first few minutes of her driving. And my friends had a good laugh at Liam Neeson's age; it was quite noticeable that he is getting on in his years. It felt like the action was slower-paced because of his visible aging but when it came to a fight the old cat was quick on the draw. His daughter on the other hand seemed to have no visible skills at martial arts or gunplay and that confused me, last year she was taken so I would think that she would try to learn to better protect herself.

Fighting aside I enjoyed the characters and how "fleshed" out they were, I think that Bryan Mills was something else. He really makes the movie worth watching. And the last scene where Kim (daughter) jokes around about not killing this one (her boyfriend) when they are out for ice-cream shakes was a nice family moment to lighten up the mood after so much action.

All in all I really enjoyed it regardless of some of what I felt were plot falls. It was a good way to spend what would have been an otherwise boring sunday. I believe that if you just have a general overview of the last movie you can still watch this one, it did not seem that one needed to know the details of the last one just the main plot. I think that if you have nothing to do and want to see mayhem this might be for you. Even though I don't usually take a risk on sequels I did enjoy it and do not regret going to the theaters to go see it.