Liam Neeson vs. The Big Bad Muslims

I love Liam Neeson. Ever since Taken, he has become Hollywood's Rajinikanth.

A still from Taken 2 and totally not a picture of Rajinikanth edited using Paint

And personally, I enjoyed Taken. It was no artistic masterpiece, but it was undoubtedly entertaining. The horror of a teenage girl getting kidnapped and sold to a brothel was just right, and no one can say they don't enjoy watching Liam beat up a bunch of bad guys, Chuck Norris style.

So, Taken 2 - Remember all those bad guys Liam killed in Taken to save his daughter? Well, in Taken 2, the families of these dead bad guys are super pissed off at Liam, and are going to kill him and his family as payback.

We're first introduced to the families of the dead bad guys, standing over the dead bad guys' graves in Albania -- and they're reciting, and they say 'Aameen' -- before totally going 'omg i kill u liam neeson!!11111111' in strong Middle Eastern accents. Sigh. Yes. The bad guys who want to kill Liam Neeson and his family, are Muslims. Brace yourselves.

The movie shifts between the nation of baddies, Istanbul, and land of the free and just, Los Angeles, America. Liam and his family are holidaying in Istanbul, and the Big Bad Muslims go there too, to kill them all. They kidnap Liam and his ex-wife while the daughter hides in the closet. Liam calls his daughter up on his tiny secret phone while imprisoned at a 'secret location', and tells her to get his grenades from his closet and throw it all over Istanbul -- Liam listens to the sounds of the bombs going off and estimates how far away she is from him. Meanwhile, the audience giggles at the comical irony because this teenage white girl is bombing a Muslim country willy-nilly.

Then, because Liam Neeson is Liam Neeson, he manages to direct his daughter to him, using only the sound of grenades and a map of Istanbul that his daughter is looking at. Liam then kicks the gas-vent in his prison cell causing it to smoke up - and he's like, 'My vent is sending out white smoke - do you see it?' The daughter turns around and she's like, 'yep'. Finding secret locations is easy as pie. She runs to the vent and drops a gun down the shaft for her dad. Although Istanbul is full of vents that are known for venting smoke, at this moment in time, Liam's is the only one doing so in the whole city, thus making it possible for his daughter to locate him by merely prancing around outside for a few minutes.

Anyway, Liam has a gun. Shit's gonna get real. He goes around shooting all the baddies, blah blah. Meanwhile, the bad guys are meeting up and going 'Assalamalaikum' and carrying out their plans to kill the American family like the Big Bad Muslims they are. Although they are aware that in Taken Liam managed to locate the jillion baddies in a country of 12 million people, and then kill them all -- these silly Muslims still fail at basic Security precautions, and Liam once again, just waltzes into all their secret hideouts and annihilates them. Like a hundred baddies will shoot at Liam, repeatedly, from all sides, but he never gets hit. He shoots once, with his revolver, and they drop like flies. Rajinikanth could not have done it better.

Lots of camera shots of mosques in Istanbul, the Azaan being recited, Burka-clad women walking around and giving Liam's daughter the stink-eye (because although in reality barely 20% of Turkish women even wear the headscarf today much less the burka, reality is too mainstream for this director). Anyway, long story short, Liam kills all the baddies, and saves his ex-wife (the teary-eyed reunion is classic Tamil movie stuff, more so than the fight scenes), and safely leaves his daughter at the US Embassy in Istanbul -- the safe haven from the evils of the nation of Big Bad Muslims.

Finally he is in a showdown with the Biggest Baddest Muslim, this crazy old guy whose son used to kidnap and sell foreign girls like Liam's daughter (before Liam totally kicked his butt). Liam is like, man, because I'm awesome and also believe in all-American freedom, I'll give you a chance to live if you agree to leave me and my family alone. And this guy is like, k. Then Liam turns around and the bad guy's like HAHA I LIEDDD and is about to kill Liam, but Liam's like, STFU and grabs the bad guy's face. The bad guy dies. I'm not sure what that was about. Face-grip of death or something. Mad skillz.

The scene shifts back to LA, lalala jazzy music, sunny skies, happy people - heaven compared to the dirty yellowed streets, ominous Burka ladies and unshaven gunmen of Istanbul. They all sit around and have ice cream. The end. You know, as a Muslim maybe I should have taken a moment to be offended by all the ridiculously obvious anti-Muslim imagery in Taken 2, but honestly, I was too busy laughing.