Mills is still at it, but following the breakup of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her husband, he invites his family to join him in Istanbul for a getaway. A few years have passed since Mills murdered his way through Paris in order to rescue his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who was taken by an Albanian human trafficking gang and sold as a sex slave. The sequel is a direct continuation of the original Taken, as opposed to another adventure in the life of Bryan Mills (Neeson). A long shot eventually reveals it, but that is just muddy filmmaking.Īll of the sins of the quick cuts can be forgotten – or at least tolerated – if the story is good. To give you a better example, at one point during a fist fight a character pulls a knife, but the camera never cuts back far enough, or lingers long enough, to identify who it is holding the knife. Some of the best action moments are actually lost in a strobe light-like series of cuts. There is never a second where you can just enjoy the action. In a fist fight or a car chase though, it feels like you are missing some of the movie. In a foot chase, using the unrelenting cuts actually makes it feel a bit more frantic. And with a filmography that includes The Transporter 3, Colombiana, and Hitman, it would seem he agrees.

With a badass name like Megaton, you really don’t have many options as a director other than action movies. And if there is one thing Megaton seems unable to grasp, it is moderation. It is filmmaking trickery, and it can work to make things feel more frantic, but only in moderation. Long shots, close-ups, side views, overhead shots – there are no lack of camera angles in this movie. Even in what should be the slow shots, innocuous moments, like when characters are walking into a hotel lobby, it’s almost as if the film is vibrating, and simply cannot slow down. The longest I made it to was five seconds.

Like a twitchy kid with ADD and an alarming coffee addiction, Director Olivier Megaton can’t seem to keep his hands off a single shot.Īt several points in the film I actually began to count to see how long before the movie cut to a different shot.

Taken 2 is a shallow, kinetic mess of visual trickery that never, ever stops, even when it should. Have you ever watched an action movie and thought to yourself, “you know, I like the action, but what it really needs is about 20 times more camera angles so I’m not entirely certain what I just saw - that would be great.” If so, then you are in luck! If, however, like the vast majority of functioning humans, you actually like to see the things you are looking at, Taken 2 might not be the film for you.

Taken 2 movie credits