Eye Candy #604 - "Taken 2"

Taken 2: Or “Things My Father Would Not Do for Me 2” (it’s okay, he’s been blatantly up front about this).  The vigilante/revenge genre is alive and well in 2012.  This sequel to the 2008 sleeper hit “Taken” (it didn’t do great box office but killed on DVD sales) finds everyone’s favorite ex-spook Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) awkwardly handling his personal life in Los Angeles: daughter Kim (again played by Maggie Grace, who will play teenagers for the next 20 years even though she’s almost 30) has failed her driving test twice and has a new boyfriend, while ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is struggling with a crumbling marriage to her current husband.  Bryan thinks the perfect solution to this would be a family getaway to Istanbul, where he has security contractor work lined up.  Little does he know that the families of the Albanian mafia members he killed in “Taken” while trying to retrieve his daughter are sizing him up for some revenge involving his whole family, led by grieving father Murad (Rade  Serbedjiza).  So now Bryan has to save himself, Lenore, and Kim (one more time; granted she is way less stupid this time around than in “Taken”) against a small horde of Albanian mafia who seem to have paid off every crooked cop in Turkey (and those that aren’t paid off appear to be off the Keystone Cop variety).  And it appears to all happen within blocks of the Hagia Sophia (it’s in damn near the backdrop of every exterior shot).  Bullets fly, cars crash, and people die, as Bryan cleans house against the Albanians (the body count is something like 25 by the end of the picture).  Leland Orser and Jon Gries are back in very brief support (a scene and a half), yet somehow earn fourth billing.  We do get a new director this time around, Olivier Megaton replacing Pierre Morel, but producer Luc Besson is still involved (this film does feel like watching a music video from time to time with flashy jump-cuts).  Not a great film or genre-defining by any means, but fun in its own little way.  And with a $50 million opening weekend, I’m sure there will be a “Taken 3”, even if it never opens in Albania.  Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”