( EW.com ) -- You know what happens in `` Taken 2 , '' do n't you ? The same thing that happened four years ago in Taken , but different . ( But the same . ) Directed by French tough-stuff Transporter 3 specialist Olivier Megaton , the movie is simultaneously silly , nasty , a lazy festival of stereotypes , and a cleverly made piece of merchandise â€ ” i.e. , it 's the devil we know . This time the blithely violent revenge thriller takes place in Istanbul , which , like Paris in the original , is infested with evil stubbled Albanian gangsters . And now it 's retired CIA intel pro Bryan Mills ( Liam Neeson ) and his ex-wife , Lenore ( Famke Janssen ) who get taken too . Miraculously , the couple 's singularly hostage-prone daughter , Kim ( Maggie Grace ) , avoids captivity , and even proves a worthy bad-guy opponent , primarily through the use of her near-magic iPhone . By the way , the chief evil stubbled Albanian gangster , Murad Hoxha ( Rade Serbedzija , who is Croatian ) , wants revenge because Bryan killed his son in the previous movie after that son kidnapped Bryan 's daughter to force her into prostitution . Suffice it to say , things do not go well for Murad . Chained up and locked away along with his ex-missus , Bryan , with his very specialized set of skills , nevertheless wriggles free . Then , on the way to rescuing his ex , he alternately beats the crap out of people , shoots the crap out of people , runs the crap over people , and growls the crap out of people . Anyone who thinks any of the above constitutes a spoiler is not the audience for the phenomenon of the `` Taken '' oeuvre , a pair of icy-eyed movies laid over a gooey core of aspirational family bonding . In these films , by sheer dint of will , strategic career planning , and physical training sessions suited to his now 60-year-old chassis , Neeson sets himself the goal of becoming a Harrison Ford-like action hero . And this he does : He 's sturdy , solid , efficient , opaque , and wears a black leather jacket well . Ta-da . He 's an action hero . ( Seems like a waste of a career arc to me , but guess who 's the millionaire ? ) The apex of the star 's work here is when he manages not to betray a giggle when directed to whisper into the phone to the perpetually edge-of-panicked Maggie Grace , `` Your mother and I are going to be taken . Listen to me very carefully . '' As Oscar Wilde almost said in `` The Importance of Being Earnest , '' to be taken once may be regarded as a misfortune ; to be taken twice looks like carelessness . Grade : C. CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . © 2011 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
`` Taken 2 '' is a sequel to a film from four years ago . It's about the same time as the first movie, but it takes place in the future and involves robots instead of humans. EW gives the film a grade of `` C ''