Review: Taken 3

The third and hopefully final installment of the series, Taken 3 certainly leaves one wanting less. Having exhausted all family members eligible for kidnapping, scribes Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen turns the formula on its head by essentially remaking the far more superior The Fugitive.

Ex-government operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), he of the particular set of skills, appears to be living a life of relative quiet. The women in his life, however, are in various states of emotional distress. Kim (Maggie Grace), still Daddy's little girl, has just discovered she's pregnant; ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is trying to give her marriage to Stuart (Dougray Scott) another chance even though she confesses to Bryan that she would rather reunite with him.

Lenore sends Bryan a text, asking to meet. Bryan agrees and arrives home to find her lifeless body on his bed and himself the prime suspect for her murder. Of course Bryan evades capture, slipping not once but twice out of the police's grasp. LAPD Inspector Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) immediately intuits the measure of his prey, heading up the manhunt for the fugitive determined to hunt down and kill those responsible for his wife's death.

This latest entry limps along, curiously devoid of any propulsion or urgency. Implausibility has always been part and parcel of the Taken films, but were glossed over by the excitement of the action set pieces and the sight of the imposing Neeson going about his rounds. Here too much time is spent expanding Grace's role - a pointless exercise as she is called on to do little more than widen her eyes with tears or proclaim her father's innocence - and positing Whitaker's Dotzler as a formidable obstacle for our hero which, given Bryan's capabilities in taking on and dispatching all comers, is ludicrous at best. It doesn't help that Whitaker is trotting out a watered down version of his Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh from the extraordinary television series The Shield (for a true battle of the wills, look no further than his time on this series when his Kavanaugh squared off with Michael Chiklis' Detective Vic Mackey).

The action sequences are predictably bombastic and include the obligatory highway chase during which cars swerve, jump lanes, go against the flow of traffic, overturn, and collide. The whole passage is edited like a seizure, literally a cut with every blink of the eye. Yet there's no momentum or thrill, and one is increasingly exasperated at how a once guilty pleasure became severely diminished. Farewell and good riddance.

Taken 3

Directed by: Olivier Megaton

Written by: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Forest Whitaker, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell, Dylan Bruno, Leland Orser