Taken 2

A sequel to the 2008 action thriller Taken was probably inevitable, given that movie’s astonishing success worldwide — a take of $225 million for an outlay of barely one-tenth that amount. The makers of Taken 2 have stuck as close as possible to the original formula: the same actors, the same high-octane mixture of violence and pursuit, the same assertion of family values.

Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, the retired CIA agent with a particular set of skills who stopped at nothing to save his daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace, from Albanian kidnappers. When the father of one of the kidnappers swears revenge and takes Bryan and his wife hostage during their family vacation in Istanbul, Bryan enlists Kim to help them escape, and uses the same advanced level of special forces tactics to get his family to safety and systematically take out the kidnappers one by one.

”Taken 2” a Warner Bros release, is Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action. Running time: 94 minutes. Releases 4 October 2012, Thursday (Singapore).

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