The original “Taken” was no masterpiece, but it was a fun, enjoyable film. “Taken 3” is no such thing.
“Taken 3” sees Liam Neeson return as former CIA operative Bryan Mills, this time framed for murder and on the run. While on the run, he must protect his daughter and find the real killer. The movie features lots of gunfights, car chases and unimaginative twists that can be seen a mile away.
It also features Neeson’s character surviving insane things that should totally kill him, sometimes without explanation as to how or why.
Forest Whitaker does fine as unnecessarily quirky, bagel-loving cop Franck Dotzler and Liam Neeson does his usual action hero persona, that at this point, he could do in his sleep.
The movie is just plain bland. There’s nothing in it that action movie fans, nor the general audience, haven’t seen before. There is little effort to make anything seem fresh or new, it’s all the same old stuff from the dialogue to the action. A lot of the time, the movie’s action, particularly the hand-to-hand combat, is shot in a way that makes it difficult for the viewer to actually see what’s happening.
The one thing that this movie’s predecessors did right was action. The first two films, especially the first, featured thrilling action that entertained audiences. This threequel doesn’t come close to that, as it is one boring action set piece after another.
Overall, “Taken 3” is little more than a forgettable, generic action movie with a high body count. Moviegoers can totally predict most of, if not the entire movie. The movie has no standout sequences and is rather pointless. This franchise really has nowhere else to go from here. Liam Neeson once told Irish radio station 98FM: “I don’t think there’ll be a ‘Taken 3’. She can’t get taken again, that’s just bad parenting.” Even he didn’t see how this movie would work.
The posters for the film feature the tagline “It Ends Here.” Let’s hope so. “Taken 3” did end up winning the weekend box office with $40.4 million, so the studio might not be done milking this cash cow.