LIAM NEESON IN TAKEN 3 AKA TAK3N

2015 rating: **1/2

Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills has gone through the ringer twice already, and more than earned the respect of his daughter and wife… You’d think. But now, buying Maggie Grace’s Kim the wrong birthday gift and turned down for a date with his ex, it seems that life goes on.

After a melodramatic prologue liken to a nighttime soap, things go bad once again. Which is good for the audience only this time, no one is TAKEN, at first. Actually, this should be called MISTAKEN as our hero, an ex CIA operative with more tricks than Houdini, is falsely accused of murdering… well… let’s just say Famke Janssen won’t be in the next installment.

Set entirely in America, the plot involves Mills evading and escaping and evading cops so vapid they should be Keystone. And while Forest Whitaker’s Detective Franck Dotzler is an exception, no one can keep up with a guy who headlines his own popular action franchise. 

TAKEN 3 is a decent programmer maintaining a nice steady beat. Although when the core villain gets revealed, the climax is so prolonged you’ll wish our hero had more things to figure out before the title (and turnout) becomes all-too-predictably literal. OVERALL RANK: Jedi, Rebel, Droid, Sith.