Taken 2 the cleaners, hilariously
There’s no need to wait for the MAD magazine parody of Taken 2.
It’s already hilariously up there on the screen.
The first thing to be kidnapped is logic, as the action moves to Istanbul from Paris and Liam Neeson ridiculously reprises his role of avenging ex-CIA dad Bryan Mills. The vein-popping Mills has turned into a human GPS unit, but he’s now more cartoon than man. He tracks leads that would leave an ace bloodhound scratching its fleas, and busts moves and baddies in ways more appropriate to a ScoobyDoo episode.
He does this despite the fact he’s the one who gets kidnapped this time, along with his lovely ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). Amazing what a man can accomplish while manacled to a metal pipe.
People will call this a quick-buck sequel to Taken, the surprise hit of 2009, and these people are absolutely correct. Unsubtle producer/ writer Luc Besson knows this. So does his regular co-writer Robert Mark Kamen and their hired-gun director Olivier Megaton ( Colombiana). They don’t give a rat’s derriere about it, as long as the cash register still goes ka-ching, which it likely will.
The irony is that the original Taken was supposed to be the cash grab. It was intended for DVD-only in North America, after a desultory European theatrical debut. It had already leaked to the Internet months before it arrived on these shores, almost by accident.
But Taken added up to something more than the sum of its parts — and those parts include $225 million (U.S.) in worldwide box office, on an investment of $25 million.
Neeson surprised a lot of people with his action chops, and the story engaged on a primal level: a man using his formidable spy skills to rescue his teenage daughter, who had been kidnapped by Albanian sex traffickers while visiting Paris.
His Bryan Mills thought he was done with Albanian sex enslaver Murad (Rade Sherbedgia, agreeably evil), since he’d left so many of Murad’s stooges in body bags after their last encounter.
He didn’t count on Murad wanting revenge, since one of those stooges who ended up in a body bag was his son. When events conspire to bring Mills, Lenore and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) to Istanbul on an impromptu family holiday, Murad hatches a payback plan to kidnap and torture all three.
And how can you not smile at the baldly stereotyped Murad? Sherbedgia’s greatest exertion must have been resisting the urge to twirl his mustache. When an enraged Murad asks Mills why he killed his son, and Mills replies that the son kidnapped and abused Kim and dozens of other girls, Murad’s response roughly translates as, “Details, details!”
And don’t let those details keep you from enjoying this so-bad-it’s-good experience, which is funnier than most comedies.
If you go to the theatre with this in mind, you’ll avoid disappointment — and you won’t feel taken, too.