Taken and Taken 2 were simple stories set up as a means to show Liam Neeson as a sympathetic badass trying to save his daughter from human traffickers. The last we saw of Bryan Mills (Neeson), he was warned by the father of the kidnapper that two more sons will seek revenge. Taken 3 has absolutely nothing to do with that.
Instead, this third outing now has Bryan running from the law when someone TAKES his ex-partner’s life and frames him for it. There’s also a Russian criminal mastermind, Detective Forest Whitaker and some guy named Stuart to fill out the needlessly complicated plot, all of which take attention away from our main man.
Director Olivier Megaton maintains the same lack of skill in displaying action sequences that he showed in the second film. Whether it’s an on-foot chase, hand-to-hand combat or a multi-man shootout, the results are the same: a badly edited mess of frames that cram in ten shaky-cam shots per second. It’s how I’d imagine an over-caffeinated Tony Scott would shoot a Transformer-less Transformers film.
Worst of all, our man Bryan is no longer the intellectual, sympathetic hero he was in the previous two films. His lack of forethought is everywhere, from the fingerprints he leaves on his ex-wife’s murder weapon to the highway pile-up he causes filled with innocent people. He also shows no remorse for poisoning his pregnant daughter or putting her in a vehicular crash. Presumably, the only reason she’s even carrying a baby is so something else can be T4ken.
