It ends here? Let’s hope so.
I’m not sure which I feel worse about–that I’ve been away for so long, or that this is my return to the site.
I put some thoughts down on the original Taken in this post. I wrote about how it’s one of my favorite action flicks, and express some fears about the future of the franchise based on the preview for Taken 2.
Oh, boy. Have those fears been realized.
My contention in the above-linked piece (and related comments) was that they could have taken Liam Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills, from Taken and put him in situations beyond a cookie-cutter repeat of the first movie with extra sprinkles. There was the potential for some good stuff there.
But that’s not what they did. Taken 2 was the same movie as Taken, only with bigger explosions (sprinkles!) and a large dose of ridiculousness.
As much as I didn’t like it, one thing Taken 2 was not was boring. Alas, that’s not the case with Taken 3, which should kill this once-promising franchise for good.
What’s wrong with Taken 3? Everything. The camerawork in the action scenes is so awful that the friend I was watching it with said that they should have called it Shaken. I’m not sure the human eye can tell what is supposed to be going on in some of those scenes. There are key plot points that make no sense at all, even by the lax standards of action movie sequels. And it is boring. I never became remotely invested in any of the characters, any of the action, any of the anything.
And if you can’t figure out who the villain is in this “mystery” about ten minutes into this disaster, it’s not because you’re not bright, it’s because you’ve already fallen asleep.
About a year ago I saw a Taken ripoff called Stolen. At the time, I made the joke that Stolen starred Nicolas Cage as Liam Neeson and S, T, O, and L as the letters T, A, and K.
How bad is Taken 3? Stolen is better.
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