520. Taken 2

"It was all right but I knew what was coming.''
Mrs W, as usual, hit the nail on the head. Taken 2 is movie-making by numbers.
Its predecessor, for reasons which I couldn't fathom, was big at the box office so the film-makers couldn't resist a sequel.
The trouble is that there was nowhere to go. So what we have is more of the same - another kidnap, another chase and more scenes where the good guy shows no mercy to the bad guys.
At least in the first Taken there was a minor element of surprise (although I never did work out who was driving the boat at the end).
Taken 2 has no such element.
On the plus side, Istanbul makes a fine location for a chase film - in fact, I spent much of Taken 2 drifting away from the plot and thinking how nice it would be for us to spend our holidays there.
So what's the storyline of Taken 2? The relatives of the guys bumped off by hitman Liam Neeson in the first film are out for revenge.
Luckily for them, Neeson and his family have decided to spend a break in Turkey, just over the border from their home in Albania (oops, hold on, Albania doesn't have a border with Turkey)....
Indeed, it is fortunate for them that their targets ever want to go abroad again - one would have imagined that the terrors of Paris in the previous Taken might have left them so traumatised they would never leave their home, let alone America.
But, apparently not. No mental scars whatsoever and no thought of 'why on earth is this happening to me, again', when the villains track them down.
In fact, the very young-looking Maggie Grace (she is playing a 17-year-old but is 29) is so much her-father's daughter that she stunt drives, runs like and Olympian and chucks grenades like a top ranked baseball pitcher.
I could go into greater detail about how much bunkum it all is but I shall avoid spoilers.
And, ok, I have to admit the chase scenes in Istanbul are impressive.
Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: none
Overall rating: 4/10