Neeson Month: Mini Review - Taken 2

It’s Neeson Month

And we continue our look at the Taken series, we will move onto other things Neeson starred in but Taken is the one that defined his role in the action genre, and since we’re not looking at Schindler’s list this month, it’s an apt starting point.

Taken 2 came out in 2012 and once again made a decent profit making $370m on a $45m budget. Unlike the first movie though, it only holds a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, that’s an intense drop, let’s see if an analysis can work out why.

Neeson Month: Mini Review - Taken

So, it’s July, you know what that means

Neeson Month!

Liam Neeson, the man with a very particular set of skills, we’ve seen crop up in a couple of movies already. He had a cameo in the Dark Knight Rises and he played Good Cop/Bad Cop in the Lego Movie, but we’re going to look at a few more examples of his work, both the good, and some of the bad too. But why not start with the movie that coined the phrase I used earlier in this paragraph, Taken

Released in 2009, Taken was a huge hit, making over $200m on its modest $25m budget. It’s reception critically was a little more mixed, holding 59% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 5.8/10 and a 50 on Metacritic. It was also involved in some very strange controversy when someone fraudulently said this was based on a true story. Turned out to be all lies of course, but still kind of intriguing. But to the movie itself.