The sequel to the 2008 hit ‘Taken’ returns Liam Neeson to the screens as well as the streets to save his family once again. With the twist this time being that Liam (Bryan Mills) gets taken himself. With himself and his wife on the line this time, Olivier Megaton is in the director’s chair instead of Pierre Morel, and a definite change of style can be seen.

Bryan spends the majority of the first film searching for his daughter, with the appropriate climax at the end. It built tension and fascination as the ex-soldier father employs his skills to find his daughter. Through gruesome and violent acts, it shows what a father would do to find someone they love. Taken 2 however has been restrained to a 12 rating instead of the previous 18. Because of this, the film is heavily limited to a broader audience.

Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian has the same opinion about the first movie in his review: “Liam was not shy about using Jack Bauerish torture techniques, wiring up evil-doers to the mains and zapping them with righteous volts. None of that now. That was an 18; this is a 12A, a bit tamer, just as ridiculous, but the premise is looking pretty tired.”

I’d forgive you if you took Liam Neeson’s type casting into consideration, as well as the first Taken movie. From these, you would expect the sequel to be a thriller, but it’s far from that. The plot is linear from the moment he and his wife get captured. As he guides his daughter over the phone from the cell he resides in, she brings him the tools of his freedom. From then on, everything just gets better. There are no twists and no moments of hopelessness. He saves his daughter, saves his wife, the end. I wouldn’t say it’s even tense. Don’t be fooled, this is purely an action movie.

However being a good action movie, it’s not what’s expected of the Taken series, and as I now know there’s a third one in the works, who else is there to be kidnapped? I won’t be loooking forward to see Liam take to the streets once again to save the family dog.