Liam Neeson's Bitch Ex-Wife is literally like "ugh I can't believe you're SUFFOCATING your 17-year-old daughter by wanting to know the phone number of the place she'll be staying overseas" and Liam Neeson's Daughter's Idiot Friend is literally like "why hello French man we just met, please, join us in this taxi cab going right to the apartment where we will be staying, alone, just us two teenaged girls! Tee hee!"
Taken is such a funny movie to have gotten the megablockbuster numbered sequel treatment but you really have to give it up for how precisely they managed to strike the Insecure Ageing Suburban Dad demographic:
- Liam Neeson has a Hot Bitch Ex-Wife who's a Bitch who Doesn't Understand Liam Neeson (but also still TOTALLY wants him, carnally)
- Liam Neeson's daughter totally loves Liam Neeson more than her new dad even though her new dad is rich and buys her horses
- Liam Neeson has a tight group of hot broskis who hang on every detail of Liam Neeson's life and whose only delight on this earth is supporting Liam Neeson
- Liam Neeson is disconnected from his daughter's life because he spent her entire childhood working but it's okay because his job saves the day in the end and everyone respects Liam Neeson for how good he is at his job
- Crucially: Liam Neeson repeatedly physically dominates younger, more athletic men than himself using a fighting style that is DECEPTIVELY fine-tuned to not really be identifiably Anything. Like, he puts dudes into wristlocks and sort of sock them in the ribs a bunch. Which is to say, Liam Neeson beats the shit out of a bunch of goons using precisely the kind of fighting style every middle-aged man secretly believes he could whip out in a crisis
- Liam Neeson DEFINITELY sprints a solid 500m without puking or throwing his back out
- Another crucial point: Liam Neeson is Right About Everything (and is very gracious when circumstances prove him to have been Right About Everything)
- Corollary to the above: the Youths Of Today (or, well, the Youths Of 2008) are hopelessly naive about The Ways Of The World (which is to say, they don't believe that they will be instantaneously kidnapped into sex slavery the moment they set foot on foreign soil - Liam Neeson knows better)
- U2 is portrayed as a band that is still cool enough that a 17-year-old girl in 2008 would follow them on tour
Like, is it a GOOD movie? Not really. Is it an absolutely peerless piece of Dadbait? You bet your ass