Taken 2 (2012)

Liam Neeson is good in these Secret Service agent slash loving family guy roles, so its no wonder the Taken series got a sequel, but this is pretty rudimentary stuff with only headache-inducing, not thrilling, action sequences (so frenetically filmed you can only give up caring what is happening) and more than excusable amounts of idiocy as the heroic American family do things like let off hand grenades across Istanbul as a means of triangulating their location, and plotting thin and often discombobulating with one character left unconscious on a concrete floor behind enemy lines for a long stretch but who is in a later scene is flippantly described as "Okay" - and, anyway, it is surely not a good sign in these kinds of movies if you find yourself not caring much if the family survive or not.

★★☆☆☆

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Taken 3 (2014)

The dopiest moments in this appalling third movie of the Taken series include a scene in which a peach yoghurt drink plays a dubious role in ex-government operative Bryan Mills' intricate plot to reunite with his daughter; a scene involving a Russian gang leader who makes a money-exchange appointment, barking down a phone, "Meet me in an hour," and is then in the very next scene seen raunching it up in a spa with two bikini-clad women - you can imagine him hissing, "We need to be quick!" (and watch as the women vanish without trace when the appointment starts and guns start blazing); and any scene involving Forest Whitaker's helpful-unhelpful-helpful-unhelpful investigator who in place of purpose and personality sports a chess piece and an elastic band.

★☆☆☆☆

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