Movies in Review: "Taken 2"

It seems that everyone has looked forward to this sequel since the sleeper success of the original. Unfortunately I can't say that I have been looking forward to it. I felt the first one started and ended so well, a sequel wasn't really necessary. Besides, we all know it's rare that a sequel ever adds up to the first movie...I'm just saying...

I sat down in a packed theatre as I expected, and prepared to be disappointed...and I was to a point. True to form the second was nowhere near as great as the first one. This version had more fists and gun fights, and lacked the story build-up of the first. The lack of dialogue made the story less interesting for me. I enjoyed how Neeson's character had to piece clues together in the first one, unfortunately there wasn't much of that in this one. Pietrel, the character from the first film was in the first scene being interrogated, but that was the extent of his role, and I missed the relevance of his part...smh. The car scene with his daughter should have been shortened, because it seemed to last 10min, and Neeson's character kept repeating the same sentence "Go Grace!"...boring.

In my opinion, the story wasn't nearly as strong as the first, and reminded me of other mediocre action flicks. It wasn't as special as the first one, so don't go in expecting the same thing. Maybe I shouldn't keep comparing the two, but it's really hard not to. If its any consolation, audience members seemed to enjoy it, as it received some applause as I was exiting. I was entertained to an extent, but overall...it was just ok to me...C+