Taken 3 is a movie in which no one’s really taken. At least not in the fashion of Taken and Taken 2: you know, someone gets kidnapped and then resident badass Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) shows the abductors all. No one in Taken 3 seems to have any “particular set of skills” to put on display, either. Not even Bryan, whose impressive methods, cool gadgets and…OK, “particular set of skills which [he] built over a very long career” saved his family’s neck in the series’ competent and entertaining first chapter, and mildly passable second. The utterly asinine, cliché-ridden, and aimless Taken 3 is so inept on every level –from its empty script to confusing action sequences – that you find yourself wondering if you’re watching an action parody and supposed to find some hidden pleasure in almost two purposefully painful hours, until you realize that what you see is what you get.
In the early moments of Taken 3, we watch Bryan as he gifts a giant panda to his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), several days before her birthday. His timing is a bit inconvenient, however, as Kim, now living with her boyfriend, just found out that she’s pregnant even though she doesn’t share the news with her father. We also soon learn that there’s trouble in the marriage between Bryan’s ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her wealthy husband Stuart (Dougray Scott), when Lenore opens up to Bryan one night (hint: the two still have feelings for each other). All this happens a day before she gets murdered and her body is discovered in Bryan’s apartment, leaving him as the prime suspect. So in Taken 3, we get to watch Bryan Mills try to save his own neck –in the style of The Fugitive’s Richard Kimble (although in comparison, Kimble comes across a lot smarter and more competent) as opposed to playing a heroic family man, which pretty much kills all the fun of the franchise’s previous two installments.
But there’s more. When Bryan discovers his wife’s body (in the visibly staged crime scene), we realize his set of skills only goes so far and it would have helped if he watched a crime drama or two before deciding to pick up the murder weapon the assailants obviously left behind for a reason and check his ex-wife’s pulse while holding it. Surprise: he gets caught with the weapon in his hand, standing next to a dead body. But still, he could’ve explained it all had he known better than running away. But of course, he does run away. The rest is a laughable cat-and-mouse game, between Bryan and Inspector Franck Dotzler (played by Forest Whitaker with a distinct disinterest), who continuously seems bemused and amused about something that’s neither complicated nor funny. Several bewilderingly bad lines are delivered during this process, amongst headache-inducing, amateurishly cut, all-over-the-place action sequences that comically get paid off by the action immediately. “Be careful, he’s playing you!” Dotzler warns the officers who briefly capture Bryan. But he of course escapes rapidly. “Be careful, Kim, this cop is really smart,” Bryan advises his daughter against Dotzler, who then cracks a minor mystery (but honestly, I couldn’t tell you what). “These guys could lose a tail if it was attached to a dog,” Franck cautions his team against Bryan’s guys. Guess what? They lose the tail.
In the South Park episode “Cartman’s Incredible Gift,” the town’s lead detective Harrison Yates claims he’s solved an obvious crime thanks to some “good old-fashioned police work,” ignoring the fact that the evidence was in front of him all along. Well, Inspector Franck Dotzler does exactly the same thing. But South Park is a comedy, and Taken 3 isn’t. In a face-off scene between him and Bryan midway through the film, Bryan says he didn’t kill his wife. And that’s when you pray Dotzler responds with Tommy Lee Jones’ famous line in The Fugutive, “I don’t care.” Because he truly doesn’t. Neither do we.
