Neeson Month: Mini Review - Taken 3

So, time to do Taken all over again?

Taken 3 came out 2014 and received scathing reviews by critics with an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 3.5/10. The movie was not as profitable as the last one, but still made a decent profit earning $326m on a $48m budget.

So, why do the critics hate it? Here are my thoughts

Well, put it this way, I was close to doing this as a Rage Review. It’s bad folks, really, really bad.

Like it or not, the Taken formula isn’t as common as certain other tropes in the action genre. The know the most common one? Yeah, the one where you have to fight with limited resources to clear your name ala most Tom Cruise action movies. Yeah, they’ve decided to go that route and it’s just as predictable as you’d expect. Look, I know this movie needed to change the formula, otherwise it’ll suffer from the Jason Bourne syndrome, but why the most generic and overused formula in action?

So, it’s been a little time since the last movie, Lenore and her husband Stuart are still having marital problems and… He did it. I don’t care what loose ends you have with the Russian guy, they’re interested in money, not murder. He did it. I haven’t even mentioned he’s not played by the same guy from in the first movie. In that movie he was largely pointless, in this one he’s the obvious villain.

They don’t hide it, having him confront Bryan early on in the movie, telling him to stay away from his wife in a very aggressive manor made it easy to spell out him being the villain before the murder even took place.

Speaking of the murder. Anyone else find murdering Lenore was a bit in bad taste? Like, she had a starring role in the last 2 and was the kidnap victim in the second movie. You could practically make a movie about the psychological damage both her and Kim should be going through after their respective kidnappings, surely it would be a better movie than this one. But what it means is it renders the events of the last movie entirely pointless.

Speaking of Kim, though, her role is more minimalist than in the last 2 movies, because they’ve factored in a classic soap opera plot for her. She’s pregnant. Look, she doesn’t have a lot to do in this movie, but this subplot is really unnecessary, it doesn’t get much screen-time nor do we see her discuss it with her even more absent boyfriend till the very last scene of the movie! Beyond that, we find out she sticks to a routine, an extremely contrived bit of screenwriting so they can use that later on.

Speaking of, we have another cliché on our hands. The incompetent, lazy and generally irritating cops. The ones that not until the last 10 minutes of the movie, consider that anyone other than Brian is responsible for the murder. The cops that shoot at him when he’s not actually presenting a danger to the public, the type that ignore instructions from those above them, thinking they’re paranoid. The head of the cops is Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitiker) and to play to the cliché he’s the smartest of them, and the only person to believe he might be innocent. But he also says this line

“It’s not up to me to decide if you’re guilty, that’s for the courts, I just need to bring you in”

No, it’s the police’s job to provide evidence for the prosecution. The only evidence they have is him being in the house with the body but that’s circumstantial, it’s his house. What else you got?! Nothing? Just as I thought.

This movie sucks, but it’s hard to blame the actors for this, it’s just a generic, boring script with some over-long car chases but some decent fist fights, some daring escapes that are utterly stupid and a conclusion people saw coming from the first time character showed his face.

Rating 30/100