550. Taken (02)

Title: Taken
Genre: Action, Thriller
Year: 2012, 2014

Summary: 

Taken 2 (2011): In 2011, at the funeral of his son Marko and associates in Tropojë, Albanian mafia head and freelance terrorist Murad Hoxha vows to seek vengeance on his son's killer. Traveling to Paris with his men, he interrogates and tortures former intelligence agent Jean-Claude Pitrel, whose business card was found at the scene of Marko's death, but finds no information. He then bribes a corrupt police official for Pitrel's files and deduces that Pitrel's old friend Bryan Mills was responsible and is in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, Bryan has just finished his three-day security job for a wealthy Arabian sheikh in Istanbul and is surprised by his ex-wife Lenore and daughter Kim. While going out for lunch with Lenore the next day, Bryan spots Murad's men following them. He tells Lenore to run and tries to shake the Albanians, but finally surrenders when they capture Lenore. Realizing that Kim is also a target, Bryan calls her at the hotel and tells her to hide, but then he is captured and knocked out. She narrowly avoids capture when the kidnappers are forced to flee after shooting two security guards.

Regaining consciousness, Bryan finds himself zip tied to a pipe over his head in an empty basement. He uses a concealed miniature cell phone hidden in his sock to contact Kim and instruct her to alert the American Embassy; instead she convinces him to let her help. Opening her father's equipment case, Kim takes a grenade and detonates it on a nearby rooftop; the resulting sound allows Bryan to instruct her on triangulating his location.

The mobsters bring in Lenore, cut her throat slightly, and hang her upside down to bleed out. As soon as they leave, Bryan frees himself and then her. He next has Kim detonate two more grenades and releases some steam through a chimney to guide her to his location. Kim tosses a gun down the chimney, which Bryan uses to kill his guards. He rescues Kim, but watches Lenore get recaptured. Stealing a taxi, Bryan and Kim pursue the kidnappers' van, whereupon an SUV, driven by one of the kidnappers' henchmen, arrives to distract them. A chase and shootout ensue, alerting Turkish police and ending when Bryan manages to lure the SUV into the path of an oncoming train, taking it out.

Leaving Kim at the U.S. Embassy, Bryan uses his memory to find Murad's hideout. He rescues Lenore and pursues the surviving mobsters to a bathhouse, where he kills them. Confronting Murad, Bryan offers to let him walk if he agrees to return home and cease his desire for revenge. Murad agrees and Bryan drops his gun, but the former goes back on his word and tries to kill Bryan, only to find the gun unloaded. Realizing that Murad will never drop his vendetta against him, Bryan kills him by impaling him onto a sharp towel hook.

Three weeks later, the Mills family is at a diner back in Los Angeles, having milkshakes to celebrate Kim passing her driving test. They are joined, much to Bryan's surprise, by Kim's boyfriend Jamie, to which she jokingly tells her father not to "shoot this one".

Taken 3 (2014): In 2014, former covert operative Bryan Mills visits his daughter, Kim, to deliver a birthday gift. After an awkward visit, he invites his ex-wife, Lenore, to dinner. Although she declines, she shows up at his apartment and tells him about her marital problems. He agrees to let her try to work things out with her current husband Stuart.

The following day, Bryan receives a text from Lenore asking to meet him for breakfast. Bryan goes out for bagels; when he returns to his apartment, he discovers her lifeless body. L.A.P.D. units immediately appear and try to arrest him, but he resists and escapes. Meanwhile, L.A.P.D. Inspector Frank Dotzler familiarizes himself with Bryan's background and issues a B.O.L.O. for him.

Bryan retreats to a safe house equipped with weapons and surveillance electronics. He retraces Lenore's travels to a remote gas station convenience store and finds surveillance footage of her being abducted by unidentified men with unique hand tattoos, but L.A.P.D. detectives arrive and arrest him. While in transit, Bryan frees himself, hijacks the police cruiser, escapes, and downloads phone records from an L.A.P.D. database onto a thumb drive. He contacts Kim at Lenore's funeral via a camera hidden in his friend Sam's suit, instructing her to maintain her "very predictable schedule." She purchases her daily yogurt drink with a "Drink Me Now" note which unknowingly is drugged by Bryan. During a lecture, she feels nauseated and runs to the restroom where Bryan is waiting. He surprises her and gives her the antidote to the drug. Bryan removes a surveillance bug that, unknown to her, was planted by Dotzler. He tells her that he is looking for the real murderer and that she should keep safe. Kim tells Bryan of her pregnancy and that Stuart is acting scared and has hired bodyguards, which he has never done before.

Bryan tails Stuart's car but is ambushed by a pursuing SUV that pushes his car over the edge of a cliff. He survives the crash, hijacks a car, follows the attackers to a roadside liquor store and kills them. Bryan then abducts and interrogates Stuart, who confesses that his failure to repay a debt to a former business partner and ex-Spetsnaz operative named Oleg Malankov was the reason Lenore was killed and that he exposed Bryan's identity to Malankov out of jealousy.

With assistance from his old colleagues and a nervous Stuart, Bryan gains entry to Malankov's heavily secured penthouse. After killing the guards, a furious gun battle, and a brutal fight, a mortally wounded Malankov reveals that Stuart tricked them both. Stuart had planned Lenore's murder and framed Bryan as part of a business deal to collect on a $12M insurance policy. When Malankov failed to kill Bryan, Stuart used Bryan to kill Malankov and remove all threats. Meanwhile, Stuart shoots Bryan's ally, Sam, and abducts Kim, intending to flee with the money. Under police pursuit, Bryan arrives at the airport in Malankov's Porsche as Stuart's plane is taxiing toward takeoff. After destroying the landing gear, preventing the plane from taking off, Bryan overpowers Stuart and prepares to kill him but pauses at Kim's pleas. He tells Stuart to expect final punishment if he escapes justice or completes a reduced prison sentence. Dotzler and the LAPD arrive to arrest Stuart. Bryan is cleared of all charges.

In the aftermath of Stuart's arrest, Kim, who is pregnant, informs Bryan that she wants to name her baby after her mother if it is a girl.