“Taken 2” braces for a down-to-the-wire action sequence
between two fathers, one exacting revenge and the other trying to keep his
family alive. Liam Neeson reprises his role as Bryan Mills, a CIA
operative with an unmatched set of skills who is pitted against Murad (Rade
Sherbedgia) who in turn is hell-bent on taking down Mills and the rest of his
family for the death of his son in Bryan’s hands.
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
“TAKEN 2” reunites Neeson with his co-stars Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace, who
play Bryan's estranged wife and his precious daughter. “Bryan's a total superhero,”
says Janssen, weighing in on what made audiences connect with the first film.
“TAKEN really came at a time when people needed that in their lives, because
it's about family and protecting your family. He's a very American hero.”
As heard in “Taken 2’s” trailers, Murad’s line “He slaughtered our men,
our brothers, our sons. We will find him. We will have our
revenge,” sets the tone for his role as the movie’s lead villain.
Acclaimed character actor Rade Sherbedgia takes on the role, which director
Olivier Megaton promises is “a far cry from your typical bad guy. Murad
is pursuing Bryan for a big and very fair reason, which is that he wants his
justice for his son, who died at Bryan’s hand.”
Megaton looked at a number of actors
for the role, and selected Sherbedgia after the actor sent some trial footage
he shot himself. “While watching Rade’s footage, I was suddenly dropped into
the reality of Murad’s situation,” the director enthuses. “And Rade adds so
much to the movie, because he's a father, too. Liam is a father protecting his
daughter and Rade is a father avenging his son.”
Bryan’s encounters with Murad are
memorable, and Neeson is particularly fond of his character's final battle with
the Balkan baddie. “Bryan, at this stage of his journey, is genuinely sick of
killing,” says Neeson. “He has physically become a machine when he gets into
the mindset of taking out these bad guys. I think his big worry is that the
machine may take over from the human being. For the sake of his daughter, his
ex-wife and his own soul, he wants to stop.”
Rade Sherbedgia is one of Croatia's
best known and most highly praised actors, with a career on screen spanning
more than four decades. HIs international breakthrough came in 1988, when
he was cast by Menahem Golan to play a captain interrogating a woman who had
saved thousands of children from the Holocaust in “Hanna's War.” He starred
alongside Ellen Burstyn, Donald Pleasance and David Warner.
Forced to flee to Belgrade, Serbia
after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Sherbedgia performed in a number of
Western European films before immigrating to the United States. Sherbedgia made
an instant mark on Hollywood, starring in films such as “Mission: Impossible
II,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “Snatch,” “Shooter” and “Batman Begins.”
More recently, Sherbedgia played the
role of Gregorovich, a renowned foreign wand-maker, in “Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows: Part 1.” He had a key role in Angelina Jolie's debut
feature as a director, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which premiered at the
Berlin Film Festival in 2011.
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