The first Taken worked because, hey, this is gentle soul Liam Neeson
breaking a bunch of dudes in half to save his daughter. That's just cool to the
ultimate degree. It should have ended there, though, and the sequel showed just
how brittle the whole premise really was. Another family member gets swiped and
tough guy Bryan is looking like the least protective parent ever. The only
upside was the ending, which seemed like the perfect setup for an explosive
wrap-up to the trilogy. It concluded with a vow that a vanquished foe's sons
would continue the vendetta forever. So surely that's where Taken 3 goes,
right? Nope. Instead it has practically zero continuity with the prior
flicks...except that Bryan seems to have a knack for beating up anybody of
questionable nationality. Instead much of the focus is on the personal
connections between Bryan and his family, although these bonds hardly resonate
because we know that in the end none of it matters; punching things does.
This time around Bryan is playing the good father to Kim (Maggie Grace) and
the hovering ex-husband to Lenore (Famke Janssen), a fact which doesn't make
her new husband Stuart (Dougray Scott) happy. The two former lovebirds can't
stay away from one another, but when Bryan comes home to find her murdered, he
becomes suspect numero uno and the target of top cop, Detective Dotzler (Forest
Whitaker). Dotzler's a smart cookie; we know this because he plays with a
rubber band and carries a chess piece. Seriously. The cops love doughnuts, too.
This is a Luc Besson flick and subtlety is not one of his strengths.
So it's up to Bryan to clear his name, find the real culprit, and hit them
in the nose really really hard. The path to getting there is incredibly
dull, though, with the action taking a serious backseat to Bryan's clue finding
and personal issues. Kim is not only dealing with grief but also a sudden
pregnancy, and Bryan is wondering how time flew by so fast. Awwww. Meanwhile
the cops bumble around, including Dotzler, always one step behind Bryan and
never really impeding his search. Is this not sounding like a Taken film
to you? Try watching it. There are brief spells of action that allow the
awesomely-named director Olivier Megaton to blow stuff up and flip cars, but
they feel strangely disconnected from the rest of the film. Maybe it's the
boring California locale. Bryan Mills and his "particular set of
skills" were made for the grimy Slavic underbelly, not the sunbaked
beaches of Cali. It's hard to figure exactly what Besson and co-writer Robert
Mark Kamen were thinking. Surely they had to know this wouldn't be a satisfying
payoff. But maybe that was the point? The die-hard fans will surely demand
there be a Taken 4 to give Bryan a proper send-off with a proper
body count.
Rating: 2 out of 5
