This image released by 20th Century Fox shows Liam Neeson in a scene from "Taken 2." (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Magali Bragard)

To paraphrase a bumper sticker, Liam Neeson is making enemies faster than he can kill them.

"Taken 2" returns Liam Neeson to the tough-guy territory of the first "Taken," picking up right where he left off, which was massacring people.

In the first "Taken," his character, Bryan Mills, slaughtered dozens of anonymous goons in the effort to retrieve his kidnapped daughter, Kim. This time, the relatives of the slaughtered goons are targeting the Mills family, who should be members of some Frequent Kidnapping rewards program. Bryan and his ex-wife/Kim's mom get nabbed, so Kim has to blast her parents out of trouble and launch her dad on another killing spree.

Is any of this remotely believable? No, but it is kinda entertaining and a much better movie than "Taken" was.

Director Olivier Megaton brings back the chaotic and annoying visual style of the first movie, but this time, there are some scenes in which you can discern where characters are in relation to each other. And instead of focusing on just one thing like "Taken" did (that would be shooting bad guys in the face), "Taken 2" broadens its scope to include clever scenes where we're invited inside Bryan's head to understand how he triangulates his position in an Istanbul dungeon or how he uses memory tricks to trace the route on which his captors have taken him. It's similar to the inside-the-mind-of-a-detective stuff on the PBS "Sherlock" series, and it's just as much zippy fun.

Speaking of Istanbul, Megaton makes terrific use of the city, which is usually seen from above so it appears to be all terra cotta roofs and gleaming mosque domes.

What with the nonstop mayhem mostly taking place indoors, we don't see a lot of Istanbul, so "Taken 2" may not do a lot for Turkish tourism ("Come see our cobbled streets -- and then get shot in the face" is a tough pitch), but the glimpses we get help us catch our breath as "Taken 2" zings from chase scene to shootout to chase to shootout to chase.

It's an absurd movie, but it gets the job done, action-wise. And after Neeson has finished dispensing with 90 percent of his fellow actors, it even finds a ridiculously perfect way to end it all: with a goofball plea for nonviolence followed by one final, face-crunching assassination.


"TAKEN 2"
Directed by: Olivier Megaton
Starring: Liam Neeson
Rated: PG-13, which is insane. Dozens of people die horrible, R-worthy deaths.
Should you go? Breathless and exciting, it will go well with a bucket of popcorn. **-1/2