Movies: Taken 2

He trained the Dark Knight.

He wielded a lightsaber.

He sat amongst gods.

He also did a bunch of other badass things.

He is Liam Neeson.

He's most likely pondering over the secrets of life.

In 2009, Neeson graced the silver screen with numerous murders of those who have sold innocent young girls into the sex trade. Taken was a hit, making over 220 million dollars worldwide. Liam's famous threatening speech to his daughter's kidnappers were reiterated countless times by fans, and in no time at all, the movie and the actor were household names.

For me, the best Liam Neeson movie (as a main character) was 2011's The Grey, in which he and and a group of bickering oil rig workers make their way through the biting cold of Alaska's merciless snowstorms while being hunted by a pack of wolves. As you can probably assume, Neeson is in his comfort zone, being a skilled huntsman and taking control of the disagreeing group. In a nutshell, he kicked ass, and the wolves should have been afraid of him.

You KNOW shit's going down.

As for this month's sequel to Taken, I can honestly say that it sucked.

Hard.

When the main character starts making crappy jokes about how awesome he is, you know this movie isn't about to be taken seriously. Taken 2 involves Liam Neeson's character having to save his family.

Again.

Only this time, it's his wife (and himself) being taken instead of his half-naked 30-year-old teenage daughter. Seriously, Maggie Grace. You're cute and you have a great body, but you're not fooling anyone. Plus, you're trying to get your license during the film, yet when your dad tells you to drive the two of you away from a crime scene, you somehow magically know how to drive.

Likely story. I'd send us into a 7-11 and we'd all be dead. 

At least that'd mean no more sequels.

But seriously- this movie had so much potential. But the fight scenes were too choppy and held enough cut-scenes for every movie in history to borrow, the script was beyond embarrassing, and-

SPOILER ALERT (sort of, I guess)

- and the end was EXACTLY as anticlimactic as the first movie's, if not worse. That's all I'll give y'all.

Plus, at one point, Neeson's daughter in the movie is pretending to go all Assassin's Creed on us and leap from rooftop to rooftop. Bitch couldn't even look while she threw a total of what had to be three or four grenades to signal to her father. Mind you, she was in the middle of A POPULATED CITY.

Like I said, bitch said she couldn't even drive a car, and she's trying to be Liam Neeson.

Even Liam Neeson's trying to be Liam Neeson. He is doing exactly what Chuck Norris did to himself in The Expendables 2 and crack jokes about himself. There's humor, which the first Taken had a bit of, but then there's: shut the hell up, we get it. 

So to conclude, Taken 2 was a half-assed rehash of a great movie that copied basically everything from its predecessor. Only The Hangover Part II could pull that off. Liam, let's just stick to different, non-sequel movies... Except for Batman.

Always choose Batman.