2. The Cutting Room Prevails
Most of us will never know what a movie could (or should) have been like until it's released on DVD and any deleted or alternate scenes are revealed in the bonus features. And, of course, that's the way it should go, because there's absolutely no way that anybody should be able to watch a film the first time around and somehow
feel that things have been cut out or (worse) edited into incomprehension
onpurpose. Which is what has happened here in droves, as director Olivier Megaton (or his editor, at least, on Luc Besson's leash) renders every fight sequence with mere flashes of action spectacle, leaving it to your imagination to conjure up what an impact wound might look like. So what's happened? It's not too difficult to figure out: like any movie, this one is desperate to make back its money, but unlike, say,
Dredd (which took a huge and admirable risk in staying faithful to its target audience with an 18 rating),
Taken 2 has betrayed its very soul - and the integrity of its franchise - to bring in the largest possible audience haul with a pathetic 12a rating. Which basically means that Luc Besson and company have completely missed the point of what made
Taken so appealing in the first place: the way the action was shot. Which brings us to...