Better than expected but still on the wrong side of good, Taken 3 is definitely showing its age.

When we return to the life of retired badass Brian Mills (Liam Neeson) he is making a massive miscalculation about his daughter Kim’s (Maggie Grace) birthday present by giving her a giant sized panda bear and interrupting her discovery that she is pregnant. He reconnects slightly with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) who reveals that things aren’t going great with her current husband Stuart (Dougray Scott). Stuart shows up a bit later to tell Brian to keep away from his wife. The next morning, Brian gets a text from Lenore wanting to meet him at his house for bagels and when Brian comes back from the bagel shop he finds Lenore dead in his bed with her throat slit and the next thing you know Brian is being pursued by the LAPD led by Detective Dotzler (Forrest Whitaker). Brian then has to use his particular set of skills to keep out of the LAPD’s grasp long enough to figure out what the hell is going on and who is pulling the strings.

Right off the bat I have to say that I loved the original Taken and I was an apologist for Taken 2. I really dig the Brian Mills character and the sort of every man badassery that he embodies. Going into this I had a lot of goodwill. Even the PG-13 rating didn’t scare me much because I thought Taken 2 did fine with it. So when I say that it is bad, it is not out of knee jerk derision for a series that didn’t have much business making a third installment.  I even have to qualify when I say it is bad. It isn’t godawful or unwatchable but it is not nearly as effective as the previous films.

The number one reason that I feel like this movie fails is that the action is shot and staged poorly and it is often difficult to tell what is going on. That is nothing new in action movies ever since Paul Greengrass made shakey cam all the rage but I am pretty tired of the technique in a post John Wick/The Raid world. Taken was awesome because it was super straight forward and presented great non-stop action. It was action you could see and follow and it was very satisfying. Here not only are you hard pressed to see what is going on the staging of the action itself is confusing and impossible. There is a particular chase scene that is so poorly put together it makes no logical sense and you can’t follow the flow of the action from one quick cut to the next. I am not looking for realism here but the flow of the action needs to work because what else are you left with when the main draw falls apart?

The premise itself is kind of interesting when you look at the character and what he has been through up to this point and there was probably a good story here somewhere as well. There is a conversation between Dotzler and Mills that mirrors the classic phone call from the first movies in which the kidnapper tells Mills ‘Good luck.’ That could have been mined for dramatic gold here but instead it felt kind of flat. In addition to not making the most of what they had the plot is also needlessly convoluted and messy with twists for the sake of twists as opposed to anything satisfying. I liked Taken for its simple premise and driving action but I am not against more of a story. I would like that story to be compelling if it is going to take away from the action, though, and that is where Taken 3 stumbles. In a movie like the Raid 2 I didn’t mind that there was more story because it was compelling and interesting in addition to incredible action. Here the action and story both feel lackluster and that is a real problem.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though. There are a couple of action set pieces that are cool and you can see properly. In those moments you get flashes of what worked in the past. The fact that Brian enlists the help of his covert buddies from the previous films (Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky) in a more active way was fun and I enjoyed those characters’ involvement. I also just generally like the characters in the series so I had a bit of investment right off the bat.  The interplay between Mills and Dotzler is fun as far as it goes although the attempt at a Fugitive style back and forth doesn’t really work all that well.

The performances were solid here across the board and I really like the cast. I am not sure why Xander Berkley was replaced by Dougray Scott but I haven’t seen Scott in anything in awhile and I was glad to as I like him and he does very well here. Forrest Whitaker is always fun to watch although he seemed a bit subdued here which is just more evidence that the movie mishandled the story a bit. Maggie Grace handles being in distress as well as always but manages to put a bit more resiliency in as well. Liam Neeson is good as always as Mills even if his ass kicking is muted by badly staged and filmed action scenes. He looked like he was showing his age a bit and I am not sure if that was intentional or if it is just that he is 62 but either way it is probably best to leave this installment as the final chapter.

Conclusion [5.5 out of 10]

When all is said and done, Taken 3 has some good material and some good pieces here and there but mostly those moments just serve to remind how much better it could and should be. I understand wanting to tell a better story but they didn’t. That the action didn’t really make up for that failure makes matters much worse. It is very hard to recommend this outside of a lazy afternoon when nothing else is on cable. It kind of breaks my heart to say that but it is what it is and, unfortunately, isn’t what it isn’t.