"Why, Liam? Why?!" I kept thinking this to myself during the latest January action flick starring the tall Irishman. I'm a big Neeson fan, but three Taken films is pushing it. The first Taken was a surprise, an action treat that featured the actor flexing his rarely seen action-hero muscles. Brief and violent, the film was a compact thriller that established Neeson in an entirely new realm: B-movie action films! How many voicemails were left on friends' phones in the style of Neeson's warning to the Albanian baddies? Countless, I'm sure (guilty! even more awkward and fun with strangers). I enjoyed the first Taken immensely, but I did not expect a sequel. Maybe more action films for Liam, but not a sequel! Well, the cash registers demanded MORE, so the sequel popped up and made even more money. Again, seeing Neeson take the bad guys to the cleaners was a treat, but the rest of the film was disappointing, and that's putting it nicely!
The third time around, I feel like I was the one who was taken to the cleaners. I knew Taken 3 would come (due to the box office results of the previous entry), but who would be taken (or...Tak3n?!)? Well, it depends on your definition of "taken." It was an utter shock to me when I realized the trailers had lied and the film is a wonderful romantic comedy in the vein of Ridley Scott's A Good Year, starring Russell Crowe. "I'm taken with you, Lenore!" Brian Mills (Neeson) says ten minutes into the film to ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), as Maggie Grace and Dougray Scott engage in a slapstick cooking scene where each get flour all over each other and laugh the whole time. Later on, Forest Whitaker appears as Ghost Dog, the modern day samurai, and does cheap magic tricks, almost fooling you into thinking you're actually watching a good movie!
If you thought the last one was great, then maybe you should stop reading this review and go buy your ticket for this one. You sick bastards! (I jest, I jest...mostly) Even you will be disappointed. It sets the bar low and fails repeatedly to clear it! Taken 3 has taken out almost everything that worked for the last two films, aside from Liam Neeson of course. Instead of an exotic location for Neeson to tool around in, providing the audience with a bit of sightseeing in Paris and Istanbul, his Mills character runs around Los Angeles and other CHEAPER places to film, battling police officers, Forest Whitaker's supposed intellect, Russian baddies (oh they've never been used before), and the editing. Seriously, the film is cut an absurd number of times. If you thought the Bourne films made you queasy with their jump cuts and shaky camera work (which I was honestly pretty forgiving of), then you better bring a barf bag to this one. Or better yet, avoid it entirely.
See? Romantic comedy!
The plot is threadbare even compared to the first two, and there aren't any huge twists hiding in the narrative. The film sets itself up with some weak drama, as Lenore wants to leave her husband Stuart (Dougray Scott, my main man) for ex-husband Brian (Neeson), and Kim (Maggie Grace) has gotten pregnant, afraid of telling her father. It takes way too long for the action to get moving, because let's be honest: you came to see Taken 3 for the intricately plotted and well-written family drama. NOT THE ACTION. I was hoping the dramatic stakes might raise the action stakes for the film, but instead of a powerhouse Neeson performance or powerful right hook from the former amateur boxer, we get .2 second long shots of "something happening." Have fun trying to figure out who or WHAT is onscreen half the time (exaggeration, of course, but barely). Yes, even the action element of this film is poorly executed. If you saw the trailer, you've seen the film. In fact, I liked the trailer more than I liked the film. Oliver Megaton, a go to guy for ruining the third films in B-movie action trilogies (well, just Transporter 3, but that's another story), directs this one in such an uninspired manner that I wondered if he was even there for half of the shoot. The second film felt like a cash in, albeit a mildly entertaining one, whereas this film just feels like it was made in a creative vacuum, with barely any entertainment to be found. Emphasis on barely entertaining. The other technical aspects of the film outside of cinematography, like sound and music, are not standout aspects of the experience. A fair amount of the music sounds like it was recycled from Taken 2. This is a cash-in at its most inert, a by the numbers way to waste 104 minutes of your day. What should be a slam dunk, whiz bang flurry of Neeson punches is instead a blur of lazy chase sequences and a letdown of a fight against a Russian criminal in his underwear. Wouldn't it be cool to see Neeson outsmart the police at every turn, calling on his operator buddies for help every once in a while? Not in this damn movie. Forest Whitaker musing about bagels is all you get. For some, maybe that's all you need?
Dougray, pining away for the time when he was in MI:2
The film is not QUITE a colossal failure, as Neeson is still there to lay down the "law." That's as much of a compliment I can pay the film. It has Liam Neeson, and at his worst (or sleepiest in this case), he's still a better actor than most. As a Liam Neeson fan, I did enjoy him (and his stunt double) beating guys up. That's the lone positive. With the action shot as such, though, it's hard to enjoy Neeson beatdowns, draining most all of my enjoyment out of this film. What else is good...Dougray Scott is in it? He's a good scumbag? Forest Whitaker is always...interesting? These actors deserve a better movie. Or maybe they don't, since they signed on in the first place! Come on, Dougray! Tarnishing your Mission: Impossible 2 anchored legacy?!
Bagels...
If you're a huge Liam Neeson fan, then I can't stop you. He IS an awesome dude. I saw the film because of him! And yet I was let down even with low expectations going in. I wish someone had taken me out to lunch instead of this film. I wonder if the Taken Trilogy Limited Edition Box Set will have an apology note from Liam saying, I'm sorry, we've "Taken" this too far! If you're thinking of paying to see this, go watch the first Taken instead or Batman Begins (or pretty much any Neeson film). If you're an absolutely massive fan of Neeson and cannot miss any of his films, add half a star onto my rating below. And then wonder why you feel like you've been robbed when you leave the theater.
1.5 out of 4 Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuU0M2xBasc
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