Taken 3 (or it’s thoroughly banal stylisation – Tak3n) is, to be quite frank, the dumbest and most lazily written action film I have seen for some time – since at least Taken 2 or A Good Day To Die Hard. Yes, there have been other examples of these ‘geriaction’ stinkers, but those two films really epitomize the nadir of recent action blockbusters.
Back to T3k3n 3 however, it’s essentially the same old rigmarole with a few infinitesimal adjustments (the wife is killed this time around oppose to being ‘taken’ from Liam Neeson, and he is framed for her murder) and Mills (Neeson) still possesses a particular set of skills which he sometimes forgets to demonstrate. But fear not, as it is the unwritten law of Taken 3 that Mills is, in fact, a God-Like Terminator that can survive almost anything.
Sure, I expect action heroes to defy the odds that are stacked up against them and escape from inexorable situations, but I like to actually see them escape from their perilous surroundings instead of simply appearing in the next scene unscathed; Mills crashes a police car down an elevator shaft and is inside a car that is rammed off a cliff (the latter is admittedly explained later, but still makes no fucking sense whatsoever) and he just waltzes into the next scene without so much as a scratch on his rugged mug. It is ostensibly the equivalent of the ‘Grenade-Ejector seat’ scene from Die Hard 2: Die Harder showing the grenades land inside the cockpit, but then cutting to the next scene without any explanation as to how McClane escaped the obvious danger.
And speaking of grenades, if having his daughter (Maggie Grace) throw grenades haphazardly around Istanbul in Taken 2 wasn’t dangerous enough, in Taken 3, Mills takes endangering his daughter a step further by crashing a Porsche into a fully-fuelled jet, that has her on-board, as it is about to take off. But seeing as he presumably is a God-Like Terminator as previously mentioned, it is safe to say that his daughter probably possesses the same immortal genes and she would have walked out the jet wreckage just fine if it were to explode as a real jet would have.
The editing in this movie is also frenetic to the point of utter befuddlement. The action sequences are cut together at such a fraught pace – whether it be to adhere to the 12A certificate and cut the violence out or to keep up the ‘momentum’ of the sequence – that they resemble nothing more than blurs of fists, disgruntled faces and black leather jackets, or if it is a car chase, blurs of disgruntled faces and cars. It is literally an effort for the mind to keep up with the action and know what is what onscreen – and that is no good thing. When, as mentioned previously, Mills is rammed off a cliff by another car, I initially thought it was Mills’ who was doing the ramming and not the other way around. Confusing!
Forest Whitaker also shows up in the movie as a detective who is supposedly hot on Mills’ heels but hardly does anything except possess odd character quirks such as fiddling with chess pieces and elastic bands for some sort of deep-minded detective personification which just comes off as insipid, rather than plain dumb.
Taken 3 is an inept, shoddily made and monotonously dull actioner that is only saved from being given my lowest ranking of “FUCKING GARBAGE” by the fact that it was quite fun to point and laugh at and point out its ridiculously incongruous flaws. Essentially, it is the bare minimum of what was/is required to constitute to a Taken sequel. If the series defies the whole “It Ends Here” tagline that has donned the posters and the next film in the series is called T4KEN THE PISS, then all is forgiven.
For the meantime however, Taken 3 112 minutes of my life wasted not watching a better film (or playing Scrabble, or participating in an altogether worthwhile experience) but not quite shitty enough to be noteworthy.
Score: 1 out of 4
– Liam Hathaway
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