Taken 3 (2015), PG-13, ★

Liam Neeson convincing Maggie Grace that he didn't do it.

It's the start of January and Liam Neeson's run of films in the first three months of any year are promising. Look at his record: Taken, Unknown, The Grey, Non-Stop. That is not bad when it is considered to release on either January, February or March. But, I'm afraid that this latest entry in the Taken franchise has ended his hot streak of good films coming out in the first three months. This movie is not as suspenseful or as tense due to the very thin mystery as to why Neeson has been set up.

The movie begins with endless introductions and build-ups as Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) brings and buys a giant panda bear to Kim's (Maggie Grace) birthday. When he arrives to the party, moments later, Kim's boyfriend, Jamie (Jonny Weston), and Kim comments that Bryan is predictable and cannot accept the gift. Jamie does comment on that as well. (I sense a little bit of predictable foreshadowing.)

Meanwhile, after Bryan leaves, he talks to his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) on the phone about Kim and invites her over to dinner and she declines. But, she surprises Bryan at his apartment when he is cooking dinner and makes a pass at him because her marriage with her current husband, Stuart (Dougray Scott), is not going well. They both kiss but Bryan politely turns down Lenore's advances and says it would not be right to have that sort of particular relationship or affair or fling.

Later, Stuart visits Bryan and says to back off but Bryan replies that they are both just friends and assures that there is nothing going on between them. Bryan gets a text from Lenore to ask him to meet at his apartment and bring some bagels. When he returns, (I can assure you this is not a spoiler because it is shown in the trailers and TV ads), Bryan discovers Lenore's body with her throat slashed and dead. The police barge in and when they prepare to handcuff him, Bryan attacks them and escapes from the police unharmed. And, in charge of the investigation is Detective Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) and he tries to know who Bryan Mills is and if he is the culprit. It is another rip-off of The Fugitive.

Neeson and Forest Whitaker face-to-face.

I like Taken a lot and I thought it was very good fun with entertaining action sequences and really well staged too. Taken 2 was clumsily edited and no sense of logic and it felt like Maggie Grace did not really learn her lesson and she is now throwing grenades at cars and other buildings. This movie is still clumsily edited with nauseating action sequences that felt like a 10-year-old kid playing with a computer to see how short of a shot of Neeson hitting somebody will be. And, it is just routine action stuff with not much purpose or has anything to do with the plot. The filmmakers use Neeson as a tool to move the story along and it does not go anywhere until we see the culprit. It is just a chase picture and also too much of a build-up to the discovery.

At the age of 62, Liam Neeson is an actor who has a dominating presence on-screen and we pay attention to his every movie as to what he is calculating or what he is thinking about. But, in this movie, he does not feel as dominant and he looks like he is a bit tired as to trying to know what the story is about. I'm lost because now I don't know how old Kim, Maggie Grace's character, is in the movie. And, I am not sure if we needed the character. Whitaker plays the routine cop trying to unravel the mystery but he and Neeson provided a little hefty depth to their characters. The villain is very weak in this film and I don't remember what his background is or even if he has a background. He is just a mob boss.

Olivier Megaton, who also directed the previous Taken movie, directs this film even worse. It is unforgivably incoherent with action sequences that are off-putting and not enjoyable. Ok, maybe the action sequence with the plane near the end was all right at best, but, we do not care about it because that scene is a cheat. There are really two possible suspects who could be the killer in the movie and it cheats for trying to give us more action. They try to encourage that our money is well-spent, but instead, our ticket money is taken.

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