DVD Taken 2: Taken, the enormously successful 2008 thriller in which a retired agent gets his kidnapped teenage daughter back, was an explosion of middle-age machismo. Seeing Liam Neeson dish out skull-cracking, neck-snapping payback to every young thug in Paris proved to be a rollicking good time. Now there's Taken 2, which has the requisite abductions, speeding cars and Americans in danger on foreign soil, but the only ones truly taken for a ride here are those of us in the audience. All that's missing in this blatant money grab is a final shot of Neeson on a spending spree with his presumably large check. To add musical insult to cinematic injury, the film ends with one of the most overplayed songs of recent times, Alex Clare's Too Close, over the credits. But that really shouldn't come as a surprise. It's of a piece with everything else in this strikingly unoriginal film. On DVD and Blu-ray.
-- Cary Darling
Also new: The Other Dream Team; Detropia; 5 Broken Cameras; To Rome With Love; Won't Back Down; Wake in Fright; Runaway Slave; One Direction: The Invasion
