A surprise sleeper smash at the time of its release, 2009's efficient little thriller "Taken" was squarely responsible for turning longtime critical darling Liam Neeson into not only a box-office draw, but also an unlikely but fully plausible action star. Since then, he's gone on to headline a number of studio features—2011's "Unknown" and 2012's "The Grey," for starters—something that might have seemed unlikely just a few years earlier. Not bad for an actor who just celebrated his sixtieth birthday. The very idea that there's a "Taken 2" almost sounds like a joke; it's safe to say a sequel was on no one's mind when the original was being made. Nevertheless, here it is in all its preposterous glory, with Olivier Megaton (2008's "Transporter 3") taking over the director's chair from Pierre Morel and Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen penning the zonky screenplay. "Taken 2" has a go-for-broke attitude that is very much of the more-of-the-same variety, but on top of that the film tosses all signs of legitimacy to the wind in exchange for the kind of pleasingly moronic diversion that creates just as many titters and giggles as it does suspense. How much of the humor is intentional is up to each viewer to decide.
See www.dustinputman.com for full review
