Taken 3
DIRECTED BY: Olivier Megaton, WRITTEN BY: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen, STARRING: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace,, RUN TIME: 109 minutes, RELEASE: 2014
Liam Neeson returns as ex-covert operative Bryan Mills, whose long-awaited reconciliation with his ex-wife is tragically cut short when she is brutally murdered. Consumed with rage, and framed for the crime, he goes on the run to evade the relentless pursuit of the CIA, FBI and the police. For one last time, Mills must use his "particular set of skills," to track down the real killers, exact his unique brand of justice, and protect the only thing that matters to him now - his daughter.
So here we go yet again for the third time around; another action-fest revolving around rapidly ageing professional arse-kicker Brian Mills going all out to protect the safety of his family (or what's left of it). To be honest, I'm kind of all over the place with this film in regards as to how I feel about it. I'm just getting a bit bored with Besson lately. He just seems like he doesn't give a toss about making good films any more like he did in his early days. I guess he's happy enough that he has made enough money now and to hell with making anything with quality any more, the likes of which he has given us in the past. Besson rant over.
One of the biggest problems I have with this film is that, as far as I am concerned, it is entirely unnecessary, and by that I mean that it worked wonderfully as a one-off film. Like Saw (2004), there was absolute;y absolutely no need to follow the original with even one more, let alone two (or 623, whatever, in regard to Saw). His innocent naive little daughter got kidnapped. He kicked arse. He got her back (if that was a spoiler for you then I can't understand why you've watched this and not the first). That's the story as far as I'm concerned. Job done, and happy days. There really was no need for any remaining family to get kidnapped too in some sort of weird symmetry completion quest. That being said, my disapproval doesn't change the fact that the films were made, and taking that into account; Taken 3 (or Tak3n if you really must), was considerably better than the last awfully boring effort.
I say 'considerably better', but that really isn't any great compliment. Did enjoy it? Yes. Certainly by comparison, but it added absolutely nothing in the way of excitement and enjoyment that had already been achieved in the first one. It was all just much-of-a-muchness. I suppose having Brian's wife Lenny (sorry...Lenore) killed was a slight attempt at trying to spice it up a bit. However, that's a fairly weak and lazy piece of script writing. It was just full of the same old moments of Brain (masterfully) kicking the crap out of the bad guys, over-the-top action scenes and terribly boring car chases. All this whilst we were cruelly tortured with having to watch the most inept team hunting him down since the elite specialists in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). When I watched the first Taken I thought it was really cool, and I still do. That being said, the coolest thing about this film is that Forest Whitaker is in it and the director's surname is Megaton, which is about as close as you can get to being a real life Transformer.
Overall, I did enjoy this to be fair. However, if you are looking for a gripping conclusion to the far-fetched kidnap story, you won't get it. If you're just looking to see Liam Neeson beating the crap out of more nasty little buggas, then you'll probably enjoy this immensely. If you've seen the first two, then you may as well watch this one too; if not just to fade the memory of the second one.