There's a lot of mindlessness going on with Taken 2, but then again, it's only right to continue the legacy of its predecessor: thrusting to the center stage more than an hour of brainless action fun. This film is terribly different, however. Four years after fleshing out the original, (and a very draggy re-introduction of characters that took like ten minutes or so) Liam Neeson is back in playing ex-CIA Bryan Mills who is of course, drawn back to the game in some way. Last time, his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) was taken away, and in his pursuit is a quest to bring her back and make vengeance with Kim's captor (Arben Bajraktaraj), simple as that. This time around, it's the wife that is taken away by Albanian gung-hos when Mills invites Kim and his wife (Famke Janssen) to Istambul to go on a vacation.
Turns out, Kim's captor four years ago, has a father named Murad (Rade Sherbedgia) with anger management issues of sorts and decides he wants to get back with Mills by killing Mills, the daughter and the wife.
In the core of this premise, once more, we get to witness Mill's seamless on-phone instructions to Kim, almost as nifty as the missions in most espionage pics. But in this equally implausible sequel, brains are completely worn out in all terms applicable. What scenes that should have been extolled with brilliance were also the scenes that the film fell stumbling with illogical decisions the director have been to. As far car-chasing movies go, and Taken 2 in certitude is a car-chasing movie, eating up almost forty-percent of its run time with just car-chase scenes, the movie fleshes out the traditionally stupid one: hitting fruit stands, and selecting a setting for the sole purpose of having narrow streets in which car-chasing will look perfectly spectacular on.
The narrative openly exposes to the audience holes to what was expected to be infallible decisions made by Mills. And like Mills, the director (Olivier Megaton) is seemingly chauvinistic in his "wise" decisions that were actually otherwise.
The narrative openly exposes to the audience holes to what was expected to be infallible decisions made by Mills. And like Mills, the director (Olivier Megaton) is seemingly chauvinistic in his "wise" decisions that were actually otherwise.
The ironies of the industry is in Megaton; as he was actually given projects with decent premise, but somehow, I can't say that it's entirely his fault, the movie suddenly turns to crap. He did Colombiana; and as far as estrogen-fronted thrillers are concerned, the pic has decent script and one of the most committed leads in the industry (Zoe Saldana), but Megaton's filmmaking bugs me out (and I can sense it's not only me), turning the almost-acceptable action-thriller to an expendable piece of garbage. Megaton isn't just a filmmaker I will likely to dig, and once I found out that he's directing a sequel, I told to myself that Taken 2 will go downhill, and once again, my fortunetelling was impeccable.
The estimable Liam Neeson says the following words in a scene, "I am tired of it all." Yes, Mr. Neeson, I, personally, have experienced your agony. C
0 comments:
Post a Comment