Liam Neeson has been widely quoted on the press circuit for Taken 3 as having never supposed there’d be a third script good enough to persuade him to reprise his role as Bryan Mills. Upon seeing the film it is not clear on what basis the actor made the decision to return for this poor excuse of a finale for the Taken trilogy. Not that the former two films were cinematic triumphs by any stretch, but this third takes the biscuit. Writer Luc Besson’s skills seem to have departed him in recent years, with his former glory days of The Fifth Element and Leon replaced by Jason Statham’s Transporter series and now these sorry excuses for action films – a genre not requiring much by way of creative script writing at best and so, difficult to get wrong you would think.
A full review isn’t needed for a film of this calibre - if you’re interested in paying to see this sort of thing, no rationale would persuade you otherwise.
However, for everyone else’s benefit, Neeson find himself in a new kind of pickle in this third and, thankfully, final instalment of the series.
In this film, his estranged wife is brutally murdered and it’s down to his ‘very particular set of skills’ we’ve heard so much about to find her killers and avenge her death.
Possibly the worst stereotypical Russian villain tops off what surely must be a parody.
Ashley Whittaker ?/no stars
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