Taken 2 is bearing down on us with all of the momentum that can be mustered by a late middle-aged man out to hurt the people who have snatched his loved ones. The first film was of course an unexpected delight, Liam Neeson bringing utterly unanticipated grit and conviction to the role of a multi-skilled CIA-agent out to recover his snatched daughter from nefarious Eastern European trafficking types.
This time around, the Albanians are out for revenge and seize upon Neeson and co in Turkey. It looks like being more of the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Although we no longer have the “Neeson is a bad ass, who knew?” surprise factor, it looks like we will at least get more punching, kicking, maiming and shooting, which surely qualifies as giving audiences what they want.
For now, we have a couple of featurettes, which are below for your viewing pleasure. The first gives us a certain amount of footage we have seen from the trailers, interspersed with Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen and Neeson talking about the film and their roles. The second does much the same, but with more of a focus on stunt set pieces. The action (and budget) quotient seems to have been upped considerably, which is good to see. Whether the story will remain compelling enough to care about the mayhem that revolves around it, remains to be seen.
