Review of Taken 3 (2014) by Itsmuchmore — 04 Feb 2015

Well here we are again for everyone’s favorite ass kicker, Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, your run of the mill, go and get some warm bagels, pepper cutting, big panda toy getting dad, trying to bring his fist of retribution down on someone for taking his daughter… Wait the daughter wasn't taken this time, OK, bring his fist of retribution down on someone for taking his ex wife, wait she wasn't taken either.. So no one was taken this time, you sure, he won’t have some sweet movie quotable ‘I’ll find you I’ll kill you’ line and what not, then why the hell is this called Taken! WHO THE HELL WAS ACTUALLY TAKEN!?

Anyway, everything seems like it’s going well for the Mills family, we welcome back Maggie Grace as Bryan’s daughter Kim who seems happy now with a boyfriend in tow, as well as some exciting news to share, and we also welcome back Famke Janssen, Bryan’s ex wife, Lenore St. John.

Tak3n-gallery2Moving on, and maybe everything is not going smoothly with Lenore and her husband, Stuart St. John played by Dougray Scott, as tensions rise after a few meetings between one another, and as like the explosions you’ll read about below, Boom, someone gets kills, someone sets up Bryan, Bryan sets in motion a hell fire attack to find out what really happened, and BANG, Bryan turns into super spy once more!

Apart from the over the top car chases with now expert driver Bryan Mills, some of the action on the roads look hard hitting, but seem so over the top that it’s just thrown in to make it an action ACTION film. It’s not needed in the degree used here and I would have preferred it to have been made shorter, tighter, and a bit more believable.

Taken44There are some laughable car explosions, where at times how it’s filmed It felt like a parody explosion. It goes Boom, and then again, and another angle and then the first explosion with someone watching and then another explosion even though it had already blown up. It’s like you can even tell someone has gone ‘now’ and the pyrotechnics person has just gone, oh **** I’ve missed my cue I’ll go anyway, you can see the set explosions. It’s surely an honourable mention for worse explosion of this year, fortunately Taken 3 only came out on 8th January here in the UK, so there is plenty of time for than award to get ‘taken’ away!

BOOM! Sorry another explosion at the end on the car for no reason.

Taken33Other scenes play out unusually aswell. For example at a road side shop or gas station, it suddenly turns into gun heaven, I thought these were suppose to be experts at their trades, nope we will just shoot clip upon clip through the drinks on the shelves in case we hit someone. No one else is about, not another member of the public, just Bryan and these other gun toting men. Even the fight scenes here are slow and sluggish, it just looks like Liam Neeson just didn’t want to be there half the time. Its not to say its awful, but it just doesn’t feel as fluid as previous fights. Maybe its the age catching up on Neeson a little, maybe its the lack of interest, maybe its just poor choreography.

Even one of final shoot out has its hilarity moments, our main lead Bryan against what seems to be against the a bunch of throw away shooters who couldn’t hit a door if it’s front of them, in this case down a small hallway on automatic burst, not a single touch. Same goes for our boy Bryan in most cases, goes through the ammo like no man’s business, hitting only with the last shot, but he can take the wire off a chandelier from 20 foot away and from round the corner! Amazing! Throw in the fact that half the time in this particular scene it looks he is fighting a baby in a nappy, then it’s Oscar worthy time!

Tak3n-gallery1I enjoyed Taken, and I thought Taken 2 at points was OK if a little bland, and I wanted to enjoy Taken 3 as well, but I just didn’t really that much. It never felt as engaging as the first, or interesting as the second, even with the turn of events in Taken 3’s story. Certain characters also seem really wasted, like Forest Whitakers character, he has aspects and traits that are shown, but never touched upon or expanded (elestic band and chess piece), and in the end he is just another throw away character, then you have the best runner in films, Maggie Grace, playing Kim again no different to any of the previous two films, even though she has experiences things, and grown stronger supposedly, she is the the exact same character with the same expression and, “dad no” lines, or cheese layered with extra cheese scenes, and I thought Shannon from Lost was annoying… No wait, yup Shannon from Lost was still blooming annoying!

Tak3n-gallery3Dougary Scott’ character is as obvious as you want, and then you have Sam Spruell playing Oleg Malankov who is in the first scene acting like the big bad Wolf, and then ends up in that previously mentioned nappy scene, so yep, you can see how much his character was developed.