Liam Neeson in "Taken 2."

REVIEW: A sequel to the 2008 action thriller "Taken" was probably inevitable, given that movie's astonishing success worldwide -- a take of $225 million for an outlay of barely one-tenth that amount. The makers of "Taken 2" have stuck as close as possible to the original formula: the same actors, the same high-octane mixture of violence and pursuit, the same assertion of family values. The location has shifted from Paris to Istanbul, but otherwise "Taken 2" could virtually pass for a remake. With more funds to lavish on production values and this time the advantage of a precedent, there's every prospect of similar causes leading to similar effects at the box-office.

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Liam Neeson reprises his role as the retired CIA operative and concerned parent Bryan Mills while Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen re-enlist as his daughter Kim and ex-wife Lenore respectively. The story hinges on revenge rather than rescue. Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (who also scripted "Taken") reference the earlier movie in an opening hill-top burial scene where Albanian clan chief Murad Krasniqi (Rade Sherbedgia) vows to avenge Mills' killing of his son, the head of a human trafficking ring who had had the bad idea of making off with Kim. His plans are given a boost when Mills -- ill-advisedly, as it soon proves -- invites Kim and Lenore to spend some holiday time with him in Istanbul where his private security firm has just completed a deal with a wealthy sheikh. One car-chase later, and it's Mills' and Lenore's turn to be "taken," while Kim only narrowly avoids a similar fate.

From here on in it's played strictly by the numbers. The infinitely resourceful Mills, who has secreted a micro cellphone about his person, manages to contact Kim and teleguide her actions, organising their escape by remote control. Practicing Houdini-like skills, he is able to break free of his bonds and save Lenore before she bleeds to death. There are no martial arts of which he is not the master, whether wielding a handgun against assault-rifles or bare-fisted against a band of men armed with clubs and knives. An ultimate mano a mano leads to a final confrontation with the clan chief and a conclusion which leaves open the possibility of a "Taken 3."

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There's one decent joke in a movie that is otherwise played perfectly straight, a second breakneck car-chase through the souk in which Mills is in the passenger seat, the wheel taken by his daughter who, we've been informed early on, has flunked her driver's permit twice and has been skipping driving lessons.

Directed by Olivier Megaton, a journeyman helmer in the Besson stable ("Transporter 3," "Colombiana"), "Taken 2" is in some ways a more polished product than its predecessor, taking full advantage of its exotic locations and pacing its action sequences more successfully. The villains are still cardboard cutouts -- short, dark, Oriental and not much interested in anything other than televised soccer -- and the general level of characterization is skin-deep. But the filmmakers know precisely what they are doing, and ultimately whether it's a good or a bad movie is beside the point. So is the issue of plausibility. This is the action-movie pared down to the basics, story-telling without pretension of subtlety, irony or sophistication, "Superman" without the superpowers and the fancy costume.

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Neeson is utterly convincing as the anger-fueled but soft-spoken action hero, the personification of the regular guy pushed to the limit in defense of his family, and it's hard to see the "Taken" franchise succeeding without him. There's a touch of vigilante advocacy in the movie that will displease some, with Neeson as a more gentlemanly version of the Charles Bronson of the "Death Wish" series, but clearly there's still a market for such fantasies. Moviegoers who liked "Taken" and want more of the same will get precisely that.

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Universal Pictures

Singer Rihanna has a major role in "Battleship."

REVIEW: The audience at my screening of "Battleship" cracked up whenever an allusion was made to the board game that loosely inspired the movie. They laughed when the Hasbro logo came on up screen, when aliens fired weapons shaped like pegs, and when a character called for a strike on "Echo-one-one" and it came up on the computer screen as "E 11." (Miss!)

"Battleship" plays like the kind of dream a kid might have if he or she fell asleep after a rousing round or two of the game. Where do the pegs come from? Why can't the two opposing sides see each other? How come everyone only has five ships? All these questions are answered, kind of, and whoever's in charge of Hasbro's rule book should get promoted for shoehorning so many actual game references into the script. (Sadly missing: Liam Neeson never yells "You sank my battleship!")

But like the game itself, "Battleship" the movie offers up nothing more than a simple old good time. It delivers decent performances even from unexpected quarters -- singer Rihanna and swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker do fine, with Rihanna playing the tough-military-woman role we've seen Michelle Rodriguez do so well (and before her, Jenette Goldstein as Vasquez in "Aliens"). Taylor Kitsch is sure to have better success with this film than with mega-flop "John Carter," but he's outacted by everyone on screen, including the ships.

The film smartly never takes itself too seriously -- when grim vet Mick Canales (played by real vet Gregory D. Gadson, who lost his legs to a Baghdad bomb) delivers the oh-so-heroic line, "Let's see if we can buy the world another day," another character responds "Who talks like that?"

That's what's fun about "Battleship." Sure, it's ludicrous that aliens are shooting explosive pegs at our ships, and that they've somehow created a protective dome over only a certain part of the Pacific Ocean, and that we just happen to be engaging in a military exercise there with the Japanese, who once attacked us on those very waters. And how convenient that a group of elderly vets with knowledge of pre-modern technology ships are on hand when needed, providing a lump-in-the-throat, go-get-em-Grandpa moment.

But in for a peg, in for a pound. If you're willing to engage your summer-movie brain, and to cheer aloud at lines like "We've got a battleship!" and "I need to borrow your boat," "Battleship" is a hoot. Bring on the inevitable 3-D film version of "Hungry Hungry Hippos"!

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Open Road Films

Liam Neeson helps airplane crash survivors flee to relative safety after a wolf pack targets them in "The Grey."

REVIEW

Late is better than never with "The Grey," a man's-man of a genre pic that will satisfy the action audience while reminding more discerning viewers what they saw in director Joe Carnahan's decade-old breakthrough, "Narc."

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However Liam Neeson's admirers feel about the disappearance of "Kinsey"-grade fare from his filmography, the film may be the best of his lowbrow outings, casting him convincingly as a broken man getting one last chance to prove his mettle. Neeson plays a sharpshooter among brutes, hired to kill wolves that threaten the oil-company employees -- "men unfit for mankind," he calls them in a nicely mood-setting voiceover -- populating a remote Alaskan outpost.

On the verge of suicide himself, Neeson must rally when a transport plane crashes, leaving him stranded with a half-dozen other men somewhere in the wilderness. Scenes of post-crash triage deftly establish him as a man of deeper resources than his peers: As he coaches a dying man through his final moments, speaking with calm authority, Neeson and the filmmakers ground the film -- promising that none of the deaths to come will be treated lightly, however pulp-flavored the script's perils may be.

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Testosterone rages among the survivors, particularly from a violence-prone ex-con (Frank Grillo), but the film makes that energy serve the story instead of behaving (á la Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces") as if macho posturing were the whole point. Skirmishes over what to do intensify once it's clear that a nasty pack of wolves are pursuing the men, killing them territorially instead of for food, and Neeson argues they must leave the plane to seek shelter above the treeline.

Some viewers will find the movie's slog through snow and pines longer than necessary, but Carnahan and co-screenwriter Ian Mackenzie Jeffers make the most of the time, wringing as much meaning as they can out of every test of courage and campfire bull session. Expected man-versus-wild, man-versus-absent-God themes ring more true than usual here, though not at the expense of the promised scares: Plenty of chase scenes and gory encounters keep tension high.

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Co-stars Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts fill out supporting roles ably, lending character-actor color to the ensemble without threatening the pack's Alpha. Occasional grace notes (particularly with regard to sound editing) exhibit a subtlety unexpected from a filmmaker who just gave us "The A-Team," and even the tale's final standoff, while pandering to the more hotheaded members of the audience, manages to squeeze off one last shot of adrenaline without insulting more skeptical viewers.

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