Taken 3

The concept of a man rescuing his daughter after her getting kidnapped had certain amount of freshness when it was presented in a sensible ambiance. Taken 2 had the same concept presented in a different way and when it comes to Taken 3, the movie goes far away from the nature of the franchise. Even though the emotional content of the movie would give a positive feel to it, the shoddy edits, crappy visual effects and the less surprising story fails to achieve what we would have expected.

In the third part of the Taken series, we have Bryan Mills living his “normal” life. The routine gets a setback when the police find his ex wife murdered in his apartment. The movie basically focuses on the two investigations, one made by the Inspector Frank Dotzler officially and the other made by Mr. Mills personally to find out the culprit.

As I said, if you have seen almost all the recent films of Liam Neeson, it would be tough for you to say whether this is a movie that belongs to the taken series. Looks like writer producer Luc Besson couldn’t find a plot that matched the feel of the franchise which basically revolves around some sort of kidnapping. And this time he ended up assembling a lot of revenge murder mysteries. As I said, some of the dialogues in the movie happened to impress me with its emotional depth and natural arrogance. Except for that, I don’t think there was anything catchy to please the viewer.

On screen there is nothing much to praise about the performance of Mr. Neeson. Olivier Megaton has tried to make the old man do a lot of running and jumping which apparently looks poor on screen. The editor’s attempt to make these scenes natural would give you a headache for sure. Maggie Grace was nice as Kim and Forest Whitaker also did his part nicely.

The direction is sloppy at many points. One thing which was good about taken 1 and 2 was that they looked less exaggerated. When it comes to Taken 3, you get to see mighty explosions and gun fires from which Mr. Mills escapes without a scratch. The script that had nothing original also spoils the fun. Luckily the dialogues help the movie to get you out of boredom. Cinematography is okay and the edits are poor. The pathetic visual effects applied on totally unwanted sequences enhance the tackiness.

Overall, Taken 3 disappoints big time with its unsurprising story and technically shoddy presentation. The rating is a very generous 2/5 (New Year bonus included). It has enough violence to “Kill” time.