Liam Neeson's action-man renaissance in 2008's "Taken" was a most unheralded critical and box-office hit for a seemingly generic revenge flick. Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen managed to captivate audiences with a streamlined story of a retired CIA operative using his skills to locate and rescue his kidnapped daughter. It was a simple concept in that it utilized family bonds as motivation, but it was made exciting through a mixture of intriguing resourcefulness and crafty violence.

Everything about the story of "Taken" was so concrete, that there didn't seem like any obvious direction for a sequel, but a gross of $226.8 million on a $25-million budget talks, and so we have "Taken 2," but what Besson and Kamen have come up with this time fails to measure up to the original in almost every way.

This shouldn't surprise anyone considering, again, no justification existed in the original story for a sequel. Kim (Maggie Grace) couldn't just get taken again, and part of the intrigue was Mills (Neeson) having to find her despite being hours behind her captors with no idea of where they might take her. In "Taken 2," it's not as complicated and the stakes don't feel nearly as high.

Simply, the Albanians that Mills killed en route to finding his daughter want revenge, so they track him to one of his private security jobs in Istanbul. As it happens, Kim and her mother, Lenore (Famke Janssen),decide to surprise him by flying to meet him there, though to be fair it's not that obnoxious of a coincidence, as Mills had invited them to come after hearing Lenore's current husband had canceled their family trip to China.

During their first full day together in Istanbul, Kim gets the idea to let Bryan and Lenore have some alone time in hopes of rekindling their relationship, but when they go into town they are followed by the Albanians, and despite Mills' best efforts, he and Lenore are taken.

The entire setup here is forced — really forced. It feels as though every single plot point or detail exists solely to create circumstances in which our main characters can get kidnapped, with ample occurrences both inconvenient and convenient to allow for problems and general suspense while also providing enough room for a solution.

We already know what Mills is willing to do for his family, so his motivation is identical to the first film, plus we know he's too skilled to stay kidnapped for long. What's required to compensate for not raising the stakes in terms of both motivation and danger is substantially more creativity, and that's where Besson and Kamen really come up dry.

There's one scene early on (as in once the film gets going early on) in which Mills uses Kim to help pinpoint his location in the city, instructing her to set off grenades so he can figure out how far away she is by how long it takes for him to hear the blast. It's just a tease that the film might reach its predecessor's level, however, as the ingenuity never gets any more exciting than that.

Director Olivier Megaton, a frequent Besson collaborator, takes over for Pierre Morel, and does nothing to help nor hurt the picture. His style is a bit more frenetic as he heavily edits the action sequences to the point where you don't get more than a second and a half at any one camera angle, but that's not a problem so much as the film's failure through and through to prevent the audience's indifference to what's going on. We were given plenty of reason to doubt Mills' success in"Taken," but this time around we haven't a shred. There's a moment in which we think something might take a surprisingly darker turn, but it's over in a flash.

The script also attempts to be a bit more theme-driven than the first film, whether just because or in effort to compensate for its pointlessness. The father of one of the Albanians Mills killed (the infamous Marco from Tripoja),the "main bad guy" played by Rade Serbedzija, has a few conversations with Mills about taking the lives of family members and when revenge is or isn't justified. It's legitimate notion, but a bit out of place; we're asked to consider the feelings of the random European thugs who we normally see as killing fodder for our action movies. We don't care if you're someone's son — you're a tattooed meathead who deserves to be offed if for nothing but our amusement.

"Taken 2″ isn't offensively bad, just uninspired and unable to make the case for its existence. At 91 minutes, it's a harmless exercise in generic action filmmaking aimed at placating the folks who clamored to see more of one man's particular set of skills, even if they're the exact same skills applied in a less-than-spectacular manner.

~Steven C

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After watching the very badass Liam Neeson's new movie, Taken 2, which I was desperately looking forward to because the original was all sorts of fantastic, I have been enlightened in strange ways. There was this bright light, and a tunnel, and it was dark and all of a sudden, my mind was filled with knowledge that helped me figure out the art of making a big-budget hit Hollywood film sequel. Here are five commandments that can come in handy for you too, whenever you make your hit Hollywood movie and are confused about what to do in the sequel:

1. Thou shalt not have any plot, whatsoever

It's sort of stupid, isn't it? Because if the studio had a script with a plot or a story of its own, why on earth would it waste it on a sequel? It would much rather make another movie out of it, which could have its own sequel with no plot! Actually, it's sort of genius, then!

This, of course, is painfully obvious in Taken 2, where the plot is exactly as elaborate as the movie's poster tagline: They want revenge. They chose the wrong guy. In the original, Taken, the daughter of a retired CIA agent, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is kidnapped by human traffickers and he has to use his "particular set of skills" to save her. In Taken 2, Mills and his wife are kidnapped by the same guys — because they want to kill him for killing their relatives in the first movie. The only thing thinner than this plot is the IQ of the mafia, which brings us to the next point.

2. Thou shalt have stupid bad guys Of course, this is an obsolete argument, because if the bad guy was intelligent, the good guy would die and more than anything else, there would be no more sequels. So it's important for villains to do daft things like not kill the good guy after they capture him because they want him to feel pain (*cough*, The Dark Knight Rises, *cough*).

But here's the level of daftness of the bad guys in Taken 2. In a major turning point of the movie (it's even in the trailer),Mills' ex-wife is held on gunpoint and he's asked to give up his arms and be taken, or his ex-wife dies. Like a good estranged husband, Mills gives up his arms, but after making a minute-long phone call to his daughter in front of the bad guys, systematically explaining to her the situation he is in right now and what she needs to do to not get caught, as the understanding, well-intentioned bad guys wait for him to be done, because they probably have daughters too, you know. And after all, the most he could have been doing on the call was call reinforcements, right? …Wait, what?

3. Thou shalt have foreign villains It has always made so much more sense to Hollywood to have villains who are not only menacing and evil, but talk in a language, that – HORROR OF HORRORS – they can't understand! So Hollywood villains are generally outsourced cheap labour from Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and South America (never India, because Indians probably don't have the time to be evil since they are so busy in taking over US jobs and driving cabs). Also, it's just creepier when the good guy has no clue if the bad guys are plotting a nuclear strike or discussing Bigg Boss in front of him.

Taken 2 takes this commandment and as a first, turns it uniquely over its head — in the movie, it's not just the good guy who can't understand the frightening foreign villains, apparently the hipster foreign villains can't understand him either (because learning English is so mainstream, yo). Or else why would the bad guys spend approximately 15 minutes of screen time looking for Mills' daughter — after he called her in front of them and told her to hide in the closet?

4. Thou shalt have fiery dialogue exchanges… sort of Every mainstream Hollywood movie depends as much on its big-budget special effects and action as it does on its dialog…. *chokes with laughter*. Sorry, I couldn't get through with that sentence with a straight face. Here's an example of the exact dialogue exchange the main bearded baddie has with Mills, after he has caught him and his wife, and is torturing them — with his accent, that is — rather than, you know, killing him:

Bad guy: I will kill you because you killed my sons Mills: But they kidnapped my daughter first! Bad guy: I don't care, they were my sons! Mills: But they sell young girls to Arabs!! Bad guy: BUT THEY WERE MY SONS. Mills: You know what, just kill me. Before your accent or logic do.

Okay, maybe I paraphrased that last bit, just a little bit.

5. Thou shalt substitute intelligence with action

So where do the studios put the money that could have bought them a decent plot, good dialogue writer, and locally-sourced American bad guys that could have helped the unemployment rate too? Answer: In LOTS of unapologetic, in-your-face action and kickass action. Taken 2 has a lot of those, and that's always, always a good thing.

There's also a sixth, secret commandment here, which really isn't that much of a secret, or much of a commandment, for that matter. No matter how badly you do, if the audience liked the first movie, it will watch the sequel and then wait for the threequel to buy the DVD box-set (guilty, as charged). And where Taken 2 is concerned, plot or no plot, watching Liam Neeson kick butt is always going to be worth it!

• Nikhil Taneja (Firstpost.com) www.twitter.com/tanejamainhoon

I was surprised to find that TAKEN 2 is a rather entertaining suspense thriller and a worthy follow-up to the original movie. Surprised, because this film got lambasted by the critics on release, and I was put off watching when I learnt that it had been cut down for a 12A certificate. Thankfully it's now out on Blu-ray and DVD, and I was able to watch the full version of the film.

For starters, it's no TAKEN. That Liam Neeson classic was a surprise hit, a pure action film of the kind you thought they didn't make anymore, and endlessly rewatchable with it. This sequel is something of a different beast, aiming at suspense and tension instead of fight scenes, although there are plenty of those too. In many ways it feels like a classic espionage thriller as it has the same kind of twitchy atmosphere and exotic setting – in this case, Istanbul.

Neeson returns as the past-it CIA man who decides to take his estranged wife and daughter on holiday to Europe, only to fall foul of some sinister Albanians who want revenge for his actions in the original flick. What follows will surprise nobody, but there are the requisite thrills and spills along the way, with plenty of shoot-outs, fist-fights and car chases. The script is derivative and there are plenty of stupid moments (like those involving grenade tossing),but when a film has drive and vivacity like this, it doesn't really matter.

Despite the film's entertainment value, it's impossible to ignore the various faults, including a lousier director than before (Olivier Megaton, who also messed up TRANSPORTER 3) and more emphasis on the irritating characters, namely Maggie Grace. Still, I found it a lot of fun; no classic maybe, and it has nowhere near the same rewatch value as the first film, but it's far from being bad.