Taken 3

Released:  January 9th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Dougray Scott

Directed by:  Olivier Megaton

Written by:  Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Personal Bias Alert:  seen none of the Taken series, not into Besson-style action movies

3 of 10

            Sometimes it seems like all series end up here.  Gasping, on its last legs, trying desperately to be what everyone loved, it holds up its pitiful offerings with pleading eyes, asking only that you buy your ticket for one more round.  It’s easy to call out a movie as a cash grab, but when everything’s turning up green (a sequel that made more than its predecessor, the returning players getting a bigger payday while the film gets less money for production) then it’s hard to argue against what’s staring you in the face, namely that Taken 3 is a shoddily made bore that knows people will buy a ticket no matter what they put around Neeson and his gun.

            In a sad truth, Liam Neeson is the best thing about Taken 3.  Even without seeing the rest of the series, it’s not hard to imagine that he’s the best thing about the entire enterprise.  Co-star Maggie Grace, who plays Neeson’s daughter in the films, agrees.  “I really think having a substantial actor at the center of the movies is a huge part of the success,” she said in a piece for the Tribune News Service, and it does help.  He’s able to fill in backstory or establish a relationship with a glance, and despite Neeson’s age and slight pudge, he’s still a convincing action star.  When he gets framed for a murder and must hunt down the people responsible, Grace’s Kim trusts her father completely, and so does the audience.

            That makes for an extreme disconnect when, for no real reason, the film toys with killing off Neeson’s Bryan Mills.  There’s several instances where a big action sequence plays out only to end in a way that seems impossible for Mills to have made it out alive.  The moment is held, as if anyone in the audience actually thinks his death is possible, only to have him pop out of some hidey-hole and continue on his less-than-merry way.  It’s only one of the many narrative problems that this film has, but it’s such a complete failure of self-knowledge, specifically that everyone in the theater coughed up money to see Neeson beating people up, that it’s clearly the most egregious.

            So let’s talk about Neeson kicking bad guy butt.  Or, in this case, Neeson punching and shooting in such a jumbled mess of shots that you can’t tell how he’s doing until he walks away from the fray leaving a trail of bodies dead or unconscious behind him.  Yes, even the action sequences are a complete failure in this film:  shaky, inscrutable, and completely devoid of tension.  It’s a classic case of muddling the action to get the PG-13 rating (hey, another cash grab decision!), but it doesn’t jive with anything the film is trying to do.  This is a nasty, violent film, with lots of punches to the face and bullet holes laid bare.  And yet, there’s zero blood, even when it’s impossible for there not to be.  Its absence is distracting and at time a bit confusing, doing nothing to bring clarity to the already incomprehensible action sequences.

            The one thing that is comprehensible, in fact, painfully so, is the plot.  Apparently, writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen learned about foreshadowing but missed the class on subtlety.  Every plot point in the last twenty minutes of the film is thrown in your face early on, to the point that it’s pretty easy to figure out who did what.  If, like me, you figure out the bad guy quickly, then the rest of the film’s plot about investigating who committed the murder is a total bore.  It’s actually embarrassing that the allegedly smart Mills, his secret op buddies, and the cops investigating him take so long to figure out the mystery.

            When I see a sequel like this, with a boringly dumb plot, bad action, and competent but uninspired acting, I can practically see the word ‘sellout’ emblazoned across the screen.  I don’t mean this as a condemnation of the people involved (everyone makes bad choices) but instead as a condemnation of this particular film.  The best thing an audience can do in a situation like this, and this is especially important for those who liked the original, is to stay at home and watch Taken.

Other Notes:

Ø  Mills is very concerned about protecting his daughter, unless there’s an opportunity for a sweet-looking action sequence.  Then he screws his daughter and goes for the explosions.

Ø  The ending had to happen, because otherwise it couldn’t be called Taken 3.

Ø  Mmm, bagel plot point.

Ø  The best decision anyone made for this film was not calling it Tak3n.