Note: This appeared in the print-only TV Guide of The Marshall Independent.
Liam Neeson is Hollywood’s gift to all us single fathers who aren’t getting any younger. In “Taken 2” he plays an action hero at age 60, reprising the role he created in “Taken” (2008.)
In “Taken” Neeson played Bryan Mills, a former CIA agent now freelancing in security work. His estranged daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped by white slavers in Paris while on the phone to Mills, who calmly tells her she’s going to be taken, and that Daddy’s coming to find her.
Then he tells the Albanian kidnappers if they don’t let his daughter go, he’ll find them and kill them. They don’t and he does.
“Taken 2” opens up with Murad Hoxha (Rade Serbedzija,) the father of the chief kidnapper, vowing vengeance on Mills and his family. Specifically he wants to take Kim, her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen,) and Mills so he can kill the women in front of Mills before signing him off.
Lenore is remarried but having relationship problems. Kim wants to play “Parent Trap” with Mom and Dad on a trip to Istambul, where Mills has just finished a job. This of course fits in perfectly with Hoxa’s plan.
The pace starts from sitcom with an overprotective father, divorced parents who still have feelings for each other, and a daughter who’s dealing with passing her driving test and a new boyfriend. From there it jumps into non-stop action in an exotic locale before the denoument and return to domestic drama.
This sounds formulaic, and reviewers haven’t always been kind, but it’s got a lot to recommend it.
Liam Neeson exudes a kind of masculine strength we haven’t seen much of on the screen since the passing of a generation of male leads like Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart, etc. Each of them expressed their masculinity in very different ways, but they had it without doubt.
Many of the old time stars were war veterans, or had led rough and tumble lives. Neeson grew up Catholic in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, had a short career as an amateur boxer, and once snuck into Ian Paisley’s church to hear the Protestant firebrand preach.
The rational for the action is pausible. This isn’t a quest for a doomsday weapon, it’s about human trafficing. The kind that goes on today, even in Paris.
The villian is plausible. Hoxha is not out for world domination, he’s engaged in an Albanian “gyak grindje,” a blood feud to avenge the death of his son.
He tells Mills the men Mills killed had wives, families, sons.
Mills counters they ruined the lives of thousands of girls, and their families. That Hoxha’s son Marko was responsible.
To Hoxha, this is irrelevant. Marko was his son and that’s that. If Mills kills him, he has two other sons who will come after him.
“And I will kill them,” Mills replies.
OK, so it’s just an action movie, but this is a very important point. We like to believe if we understand what somebody’s grievance with us is, we can always reach some kind of accomodation.
There is not a shred of evidence to support this.
Yes, an enemy is not a villain in his own eyes and he has his own reasons. But they are not our reasons, and sometimes we cannot share a world in peace.
The action is standard Rambo-fare, but better done than most. Furthermore, it’s got a lot of clever stuff in it. When Mills and Lenore are taken and transported with bags over their heads, Mills does his spy thing.
“One, two, three, right turn, sound of metal hammering. One, two, three, four, music playing, left turn…”
Lenore and Kim are brave and capable of being cool in a crisis, but neither of them is Wonder Woman, demolishing men hand-to-hand.
The crowded environment of Istambul with its winding narrow alleys and close set roof tops makes close personal combat plausible.
And someone has done his homework. In one scene Mills uses a move to disarm his opponent that I’ve heard about, but never seen taught.
When his enemy pulls out a pistol, Mills counters with a hard palm-heel strike directly to the muzzle of the gun.
This move is said to cause an automatic to jam. You can see why it’s not recommended, but it’s really interesting to me that the director would include that piece of obscure combat lore in the movie.
If you like action movies, and can ignore some continuity problems (Lenore is hung upside down with a cut throat to bleed out slowly, but when the head bag comes off has no blood on her face or hair) then pay no attention to the critics.
Neeson is inspiring to us geezers as an aging professional in the most important fight of his life. Janssen is very appealing as a ‘woman of a certain age’ who has aged very well, and Grace comes off as adorably spunky under stress.
And one can’t help but notice that Hoxa’s two sons are still around…