Review of Taken 3 (2014) by Dave M — 20 Jul 2015

When is a sequel not a sequel? Maybe when a recurring character is replaced with another actor who doesn't even look like the original guy? What about when the main characters start acting and reacting differently than in the previous films? Or perhaps it's when a film abandons most of what defined the franchise and made it popular in the first place? I'm afraid all three of those things are at work in "Taken 3" (PG-13, 1:49). The original "Taken" saw retired CIA operative Brian Mills (Liam Neeson, playing an action hero for the first time) tear up Paris as he searches for his kidnapped daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). That film was original and exciting enough to spawn a sequel. In "Taken 2", the family and friends of the kidnappers Brian killed in the first film catch up to him and his family in Istanbul and take him and his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), captive to exact their revenge. The cool twist in that film is that Kim ends up being instrumental in saving her parents. A lot of people didn't like the second one, but I did (although not as much as the first). I'm afraid I can't be as kind to the third installment in the series, mainly because it's barely a sequel at all.

"Tak3n" (as it is written on the movie posters) opens with a Russian mobster by the name of Oleg Malankov (Sam Spruell) kidnapping and then killing an accountant when the accountant can't lay his hands on money that his boss owes to Malankov. We later find out that the accountant's boss is Stuart St. John, of the I-married-Brian-Mills'-ex-wife-and-helped-raise-Kim St. Johns. However, for this movie, the original Stuart, American light-haired actor Xander Berkeley has been replaced by dark-haired Scottish actor Dougray Scott. Apparently, this Stuart had some shady business dealings with the Russians and when their latest deal fell apart, Malankov has come for Stuart, but first kills Lenore. Brian discovers the body and immediately becomes the number one suspect. He runs from the police and spends the rest of the movie running around trying to find out exactly who killed Lenore. He gets help from his CIA buddies from the first movie and he is pursued by Inspector Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), who knows how good Brian is and does pretty well at almost keeping up with him.

The problem with "Taken 3" is that Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (both of whom wrote all three films) seem to have forgotten what made the first film such a hit. They have abandoned the exotic locales featured in the first two films, setting this one in L.A. Except for Brian, Besson and Kamen have made most of their characters (especially Stuart) meaner, less moral or dumber than in the first two films. AND no one gets TAKEN (unless you count Lenore, who is murdered) so there's no one for Brian to rescue! Yes, he's still protecting his daughter, but the writers seem to think we need to see Kim as more vulnerable than a college student whose dad has very dangerous enemies, so he saddles her with an unnecessary side story that is only referenced very early in the movie and in a brief lame scene at the end.

Now, some of you reading this review may argue that a movie should stand on its own merits. I agree - to an extent. Most people who come to see this movie are coming because they enjoyed the first film and maybe the second, but most of the appeal of those two films have been Taken out of this one. Those who aren't familiar with the franchise and come to see this movie because it looks like a good action movie are likely to be disappointed as well. The action sequences are good, but not great, and the plot, which is supposed to give those scenes meaning and import feels contrived and the villains come across more as silly cardboard cutouts than the scary monsters they're intended to be. The main reason I feel justified in judging this film based on the first two is that the movie poster features the tag line "It Ends Here." To me that strongly implies a continuation of Brian's battle with the obscure, but frightening gangsters from Tropojë, Albania. Instead we get the villain de jour - Russian mobsters - with no connection to the plot of the first two movies. They could have just as easily called this movie "Non-Stop 2" or "Still Unknown", or even "From Russia...with Guns". I was quite... taken with the first film in this series and, to a lesser extent was taken too by the second. This time, the only thing taken was my money - and my time. "Taken 3" gets a "C-" from me.