According to Liam Neeson, he never expected Taken to be the film that would define the rest of his career.  Since its release, Liam Neeson has starred in a variety of action films, each hoping to piggy-back off the success of the original.  While some of these films have been better than Taken, like A Walk Among the Tombstones, the subsequent sequels to it have only gotten worse.  If someone was to write a thesis paper on how not to make an action film, Taken 3 (or Tak3n according to some posters) would be that paper.

In what is billed as the final film in the franchise (although I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the case), something else is taken from ex-government agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson).  This time it’s his ex wife’s (Famke Janssen) life.  After being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bryan is the prime suspect for the murder.  Now Bryan’s must evade the police, led by Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), whilst trying to find the true killer and clear his name.

I could go on and on about the various problems that plague this film but I’ll try to keep it brief.  For starters, the story itself makes little sense and is unrealistic even by action movie standards.  One of the aspects that I loved about the original Taken was that it spent a great deal of time showing Bryan investigating and interrogating in order to find the location of his daughter.  In this film Bryan inexplicably knows exactly where he needs to go and who to pursue without showing the audience how he arrived to those conclusions.  Also the dialogue, while never spectacular in any of the previous films, is especially awful here.  Of particular note is in the final scene between Bryan and Franck, which contains quite possibly the stupidest line I’ve heard in a while.  Another problem lies in the fact that Bryan is practically invincible.   While people surviving in impossible situations is nothing new for action movie standards, this film takes it way too far.  Bryan is able to survive explosions and car wrecks without so much as a scratch and how he gets out of these situations are never made clear to the audience, making it almost seem as if he teleported out of it.  It also doesn’t help that Bryan’s decision to run from the police makes no sense.  All of the above problems make it impossible to relate or be invested in a character that we able to previously sympathize with in the original film.

However, the biggest problem with Taken 3 is the editing and cinematography.  Olivier Megaton may just be the worst action director of all time if he thought the shots in this film looked good in anyway.  Every action scene is made up of extreme, shaky close-ups that last barely a second, and shows everything but the action.  There are no establishing shots, where the camera shows where all of the characters are in relation to each other.  Consequently, none of the action scenes have any sort of tension in them as most of the time the audience is just trying to figure out what’s going on during these scenes.  A good example of this happens early in the film during a car chase.  This scene is shot and edited the same way as the other action scenes, meaning that you have knowledge of who is gaining on who, which car is which, etc.  Even normal dialogue scenes are edited to include as many shots as possible from relatively low angles.  It almost seems as if the director had several cameras running at once and refused to let any of the footage go to waste.  Megaton also directed Taken 2, which used a similar style, but it wasn’t nearly as distracting as it here.

Another major issue I have with this film is just how tame it is.  Due to its PG-13 rating, there is absolutely no blood or any clear fighting.  I’m not one who demands for gratuitous blood and gore in films, but the complete lack of it impairs the action scenes even more.  Sometimes its not clear about just how much a character is injured or even if their dead as a result of this.  The first Taken film had little to no blood to but it was shot in a way that effectively communicated what was being done without actually depicting.

Even if you’re looking for a dumb action film, you’re better off watching something else.  Taken 3 just fails at achieving even the bare minimum of what is required of a passable action film.  Save your money, because the only thing that gets Taken in this film is your time.

For alternate recommendations, I highly recommend checking out either A Walk Among the Tombstones or John Wick.