Director: Olivier Megaton
Cast: Liam Neeson, Forrest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, Dougray Scott, Leland OrserCountry: France
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 108 minutes
There's no clever way to introduce this or fun way to beat around the bush. Therefore, I am just going to get right to it. Taken 3 ends the Taken trilogy on a whimper with the queasiest action scenes yet. It wasn't enough that director Olivier Megaton ruined Transporter 3 back in '08, the man had to get his silky fingers all over Taken 3 and drag it down to the same depths of queasy cam hell. Also, talk about a bad time for third installments lately. The Expendables 3 was an atrocious installment in an otherwise good action franchise that relied upon old fashioned bad ass entertainment. And now we have Taken 3, the final installment in a franchise that started off on fire but has since burnt out to nothing but ashes. It's a shame because even though Taken 3 takes a tired franchise in a fresh direction, the execution is what brings the film crashing down.
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| "Give me my $20 million, I'm done with this Bryan Mills crap." |
Taken 3 places Bryan Mills into the biggest, boldest, and grandest crisis of his life yet. After the events of Taken and Taken 2, Mills continues his life in Los Angeles near his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). Kim is grown up now and living with her new boyfriend while Lenore is back with her ex-husband, Stuart (Dougray Scott taking over for Xander Berkeley). When Stuart shows up at Bryan's apartment one day, he tells him to stay away from Lenore in order for him to mend his relationship with her better. Bryan reluctantly agrees and continues on with his day to day life. However, he receives a text from Lenore the next day asking if he can meet up and speak with her. Knowing that Lenore may be in serious turmoil, Bryan agrees to meet her at his apartment. Upon arriving, Bryan finds Lenore dead with her throat slit. The police arrive on the scene at the exact moment and suspect Bryan to be the killer. Therefore, Bryan kicks into fugitive mode, escapes the police, and sets out to find his ex-wife's true killer all while clearing his own name.
Even though Taken 2 was different from Taken, the film rang eerily similar in its motions and events. The sequel showcased both a crucial phone call to a loved one and had one of Bryan's loved ones be taken from him yet again. Many people decried the film as a lazy rehash of the original for these things. Screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen must have taken this criticism to heart because the two did a fantastic job at taking the franchise in a new direction for its final installment. Instead of telling another story about one of Bryan's loved ones being physically taken from him, Besson and Kamen wrote a trilogy capper that placed their hero in a The Fugitive-type situation where he has to go on the run and clear his name. Not only is Bryan's ex-wife taken from him forever, but his life is essentially taken as well. Audiences love "innocent men on the run" plots because it makes for exciting and engaging entertainment. I love this fresh direction so much and wished that Taken 3 had found a way to deliver on such a premise. But alas, this is what happens when Besson assigns a hack director like Olivier Megaton to a film.
I have written before that the action scenes featured in Megaton films like Transporter 3 and Taken 2 are mediocre and average at best. His action scenes typically feature extreme close ups and rapid cuts, thereby rendering the action visually incoherent. And while I originally thought that the fight scenes in his films were bad, I didn't know how bad Megaton could get until I saw Taken 3. The action scenes in Taken 3 are some of the worst, if not the worst action scenes in cinema history. Megaton takes his rapid cutting and close shooting to a new extreme of awful. As I sat and the watched the film, I consistently thought to myself, "I have no clue what is going on this action scene. I can't tell if Bryan just killed that character or not." Car chases, fist fights, and foot chases are incoherent to the point of nauseaum. The action photography in Taken 3 is so bad, that you could find better photography in a found footage horror film for goodness sakes!
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| This image is more bad ass as a still than in motion. Trust me. |
I only found two slightly cohesive action beats in all of Taken 3's muddled mess. In one action scene, Bryan and a Russian henchman shoot at one another through a rack of wine bottles in a liquor store. The scene makes for some great carnage and features some of the film's only coherent action photography. I also enjoyed the concept behind the film's final action scene in which Bryan must infiltrate a Russian mob boss' penthouse. Even though the photography is awful during the sequence, a few choice moments of violence make it through all of the clutter to deliver some excitement. Bryan has an especially awesome one on one gun fight with the mob boss in his apartment that makes for a cool shootout.
The Taken franchise is notorious for its violence being neutered upon theatrical release but eventually restored upon home media release. This time around though, I don't know if an unrated cut would make much of a difference. Even if extra moments of violence were added, I don't know if I could catch them amongst the film's many cuts and extreme close ups. It should be noted that Taken 3's violence is shockingly tame as well. I miss the days when we could actually see Bryan shoot a henchman in the face. Now we get a simple cut away and a sound effect letting us know what happened. Oh boy, how exciting.
Liam Neeson seems to be going with the motions more than ever as he nearly reaches the point of self parody with his turn in Taken 3. Neeson's gruff statements and actions seem lazier than ever. It's a damn shame that the great Bryan Mills goes off on such a low note because Mills makes for a great screen character when treated correctly a-la Taken. Returning cast members Maggie Grace, Leland Orser, and Famke Janssen do a fine job as always with respective franchise characters. However, Taken 3 adds a new character dynamic to the film in the form of Inspector Dotzler (Forrest Whitaker). Whitaker plays an Inspector on Mills' case that comes off as a combination between Whitaker's character in The Last Stand and obviously Tommy Lee Jones' character in The Fugitive, a film that was clearly an inspiration on Besson's screenplay. Whitaker's realization of Mills' innocence is entirely predictable and nearly a beat for beat recreation of Jones' realization in The Fugitive. While I commend Besson for adding an inspector dynamic to the film, I decry the man for duplicating The Fugitive beat for beat.
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| Schindler's List 2: Schindler's Pissed |
Taken 3 easily ranks as one of the most disappointing and devastating finales in action history. After the runaway success of Taken and the mediocrity of Taken 2, I had a lot of excitement going into this film. A third film could easily rectify the franchise even if the second installment was weak and tired. But alas, Megaton found a way to make Taken 3 even worse than Taken 2. As a whole, the Taken trilogy is a weak franchise. Individually, each Taken film gets worse than the previous, with the first film being the only excellent installment in the trilogy. Taken 3 is not only the worst installment in the series, but one of the worst installments in any action franchise ever made. The film's incoherent action scenes, predictable villain, and beat for beat recreation of The Fugitive's well known inspector dynamic makes for a truly dreadful viewing experience. Unless something else comes along this year and drops the ball as badly, Taken 3 looks like an early contender for most disappointing action film of 2015. And we're not even two weeks into the new year...
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