Let me be VERY clear: Taken 3 is ONLY for fans of Liam Neeson kicking ass. This movie has pot hole plot holes along the car chase roads Neeson takes. Characters get one line of background before being viciously beaten. And if you’re a fan of Neeson, none of this will matter.
Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has found life’s sweet spot. He is in a good place with his ex Lenore (Famke Janssen) and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), the only two people he cares about. Best of all, foreign mob contingents have stopped hunting down his family. That is, until mobster Oleg Malankov (Sam Spruell) runs afoul of Stuart St. John (Dougray Scott), who just happens to be Lenore’s husband. Phone calls, crying daughters, and geriatric whoopings ensue. Oh yeah, Forest Whitaker is also involved.
Taken was fun because of the kinetic action sequences. The shooting walked the line between disorienting and visceral, giving the movie lots of life. Taken 3 must have been a humanitarian effort by Luc Besson (the writer/producer) and Olivier Megaton (the director) to give cameramen with cerebral palsy their moment in the sun. The shaky cam in Taken 3 is as violent as I have ever seen it, almost making me sick a bunch of times. When it wasn’t doing that, the camera cut faster than a blinking eye; at no point during the several fight sequences did I have any idea who was punching whom where. The best sequence of Taken 3 is in the trailer, and it involves one of the coolest ways to take down a plane with a car.
Plot holes were a given for any Taken film, sometimes generating laughs at the superhuman nature of Mr. Mills. In Taken 3, the survival skills of Neeson lack any sort of logic whatsoever. Here’s an example: when you escape the cops by driving down an elevator shaft in a parking garage, you shouldn’t be able to end up unscathed blocks away and have a cell phone you previously didn’t have. Maybe the feared mobster sould be able to hit Mills once with a giant assault weapon. Worst of all, after it all ends, and a man who MURDERED 40 PEOPLE wouldn’t be allowed to just leave the station. I mean, come on, at least threaten him instead of just letting him go. Some of the escapes are so ludicrous that the filmmaker actually has Neeson explain how he did it, and even then, the explanation is crap.
Liam Neeson gets to order people around and be intimidating, but he looks pretty bored by this character now. That paycheck must have been sweet though. Forest Whitaker has fun with his paycheck role as the cop, almost laughing when he doesn’t investigate the various wrongdoings of Neeson. Maggie Grace gets to hold blankets and close her eyes to feign sadness. And Famke Janssen is also in this. There are other “characters” that die in 5 minutes or so that aren’t worth your time.
“It was the bagels.” That line alone should sum up all you need to know about Taken 3. When bagels are a prominent plot point, you know you’ve gotten real lazy. Just remember, if Liam Neeson shows up at your house with a giant panda doll and you’re 23 going on 31, your father is probably a maniacal assassin, and you’re being hunted by European mobsters.