Review of Taken 2 (2012) by Eric B — 12 Jun 2014

There are a number of things that the filmmakers would have us believe here that are all equally implausible: A man whose daughter was kidnapped in FRANCE and sold as a sex slave prompting an improbable recovery in which he killed (some quite sadistically) many malevolent perpetrators, would soon go to TURKEY with the family for some R&R without an armed guard at all times ("No, really sweetie.

.. Nothing's gonna happen to us this time! Sure, it's Turkey but they're a member of NATO for god's sakes"). After that, we are asked to believe that a man whose son was killed by the hero, would want to kill not only him but his ex-wife AND daughter (the very person that his son took part in kidnapping in the first movie).

This is obviously a very angry man who went to great lengths for revenge even on someone that was his son's earlier victim. So would you think he'd be absolutely certain that his nemesis was killed? Not in a movie this preposterous, of course! ("Hey, this guy miraculously escaped from us multiple times, do you think we should have multiple people guarding him at all times? Nah! Let's just leave him chained to the pipe like last time.

He couldn't possibly outwit us AGAIN"). By the time the hero asks his daughter to detonate a grenade then counts the seconds elapsed until he hears the explosion (so he could ultimately guide her to the exact location he's been left to die), you can no longer take this movie seriously and just want to laugh hysterically at the spectacle.

I can't wait for the sheer drama of Taken 3, when terrorists kidnap the family dog. Oh, how we'd see Bryan Mills at the height of his vindictiveness.