Taken 2

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Product Description ------------------- Brace yourself for the Unrated Edition of TAKEN 2, with even more explosive action and thrilling suspense - plus in-depth extras that take you deep behind the front lines of a one-man war. Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA operative who finds himself taken hostage along with his wife. To survive, Bryan must enlist the help of an unlikely ally and use his brutally efficient skills to take out his kippers. .com ---- Coming at a time when the action genre was dominated by shaky-cam Bourne editing shenanigans, 2008's Taken registered as a pleasantly streamlined surprise: a straight-ahead thriller where the clean, clear style both matched and accentuated Liam Neeson's ruthless-blunt-object force. Strangely, the sequel feels much more in line with producer Luc (The Transporter, Colombiana) Besson's other franchises--noisy, chaotically slammed together, and in dazed thrall to its own flash. (If there's an rtunity for a swooping helicopter or a fruit-cart collision, this sucker's going to go for two.) However, even if it can't match the impact of its predecessor, the of Neeson in righteous revenge mode still carries some considerably addictive juice. Set several years after the events of the first installment, the story finds Neeson's black-ops professional losing ground with his beloved daughter (Maggie Grace), while forming a tentative rapprochement with his ex-wife (the always welcome Famke Janssen). During a working vacation in Istanbul, their family ties are sorely testing by the appearance of an army of villains with a particular score to settle. Director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) digresses wildly from previous director Pierre Morel's no-nonsense approach, choosing instead to revel in over-the-top implausibilities; some pleasantly goofy (two words: grenade cartography), and others just sort of baffling (the reprisal of the first film's famous phone call comes in the middle of a fight scene, while a bunch of armed goons stand around obligingly). Still, even if the narrative rarely makes sense, Neeson keeps things from wandering too far off track, via sheer movie star presence. Craggier and somehow taller than ever, he makes for an ideal Family Man of Action: intriguingly self-contained, tender in repose, and absolutely ferocious when provoked. When he gets going, prepare to feel a little sorry for the bad guys. --Andrew Wright