As it turns out, he still has a very particular set of skills. It's nearly four years since Liam Neeson action vehicle "Taken" became a surprise worldwide smash-hit: the Luc Besson-produced film made more than $200 million worldwide, which was particularly impressive given its meager $25 million budget, and it turned Neeson into an A-list star. It took some wrangling, but Besson and Fox finally got the star back for a sequel, and a first look at the film has debuted over at Entertainment Weekly.
Directed by Olivier Megaton ("The Transporter 3"), the film sees former special ops type Bryan Mills (Neeson) holidaying in Istanbul with his wife and daughter, only to be confronted by the vengeful father (Rade Serbedzija) of one of the human traffickers he killed off in the last movie. Clearly, from the stills, Neeson doesn't deal with it by running away and hiding: there's gunplay on a train, neck-snapping, and sparks flying.
Neeson's also talked to the magazine, and says that the action's been upped the second time around, while there's also a role-reversal twist to the plotting. "The action is supposed to take place about a year or a year and a half after the first story. It’s a very clever sequel with the usual thrills and spills, but the ante is upped quite a bit in this one… They kidnap [my character] to humiliate him, torture him, and ultimately bring him back to the village in Albania where the boys from the original film came from. With the help of my daughter… she wants to help me escape from where these bad guys have me"
Neeson reveals that there are some reshoots happening in the near future, but otherwise the film is on course for its release date on October 5th: we imagine we'll be seeing a teaser trailer in the near future, perhaps before Fox releases "Prometheus" or "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."[EW]
