Again, Liam is indestructible, unkillable, surviving guns, knives, explosions, crashing cars (mind you, without a scratch), and all sorts of bad guys who just can’t kill him. In 2008, the body count was very high when he rescued his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from slave traders in France. It was made like an FPJ movie and truly worked as an action-thriller and a guilty pleasure. In 2012, the kinsmen of those slave traders try to get even with Mills in “Taken 2” by kidnapping not only Kim but also his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Jannsen), while on vacation in Istanbul (which proved to be an exciting backdrop.)
In ‘Taken 3’, producer and co-writer Luc Besson has gotten tired of Europe and sets the story in Los Angeles. This time, the title is no longer applicable because no one is taken. Instead, they kill Lenore, now married to a nefarious businessman named Stuart (Dougray Scott) and frame up Mills for the murder. If you intend to watch the movie, read no further as there will be spoilers.
Falsely accused of being the prime suspect, Mills decides to escape from the cops and be a Jean Valjean as a fugitive on the run, with Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker in a thankless role as the police chief/Inspector Javert who doggedly pursues him but always ends up one step behind. This is because Mills, serious on solving Lenore’s murder on his own, is more resourceful and slippery than Jean as he’s a techie who knows how to download GPS data from cars, hack into CCTV cameras and gain access to high tech weaponry with the help of his spy friends. It’s the cops who are made to look like villains trying to thwart Mills’ efforts every step of the way.
Sad to say, Neeson is no longer believable as an action star. The editing and camera work helps him in the action sequences. It’s obvious he has a double and the number of cuts per scene are too numerous to make sure that the audience won’t notice the sleight of hand. Even the car chase scenes do not make much sense as the viewer loses one’s sense of orientation and demographic space on screen. Director Olivier Megaton just pushes the envelope so much relying on editing and frantic flash-cutting, with so many sudden inserts, that after a while, it becomes not just incredible but ridiculous. For us, the best action film we’ve seen lately remains Keanu Reeves’ “John Wick”. It’s just too bad that it was not well promoted.
