Taken 3 (2015)

If I were the kind of reviewer who did video or audio reviews, my write-up of Taken 3 would begin with a very clear and audible sigh of disappointment.  I’m not sure with whom or what I’m most disappointed – the film itself, the people who created it without much regard for it actually being a proper Taken film, or myself for possessing expectations some would consider to be unreasonable for a film bearing the alternative title Tak3n.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), he of the “particular set of skills,” is framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen).  Pursued by a police inspector (Forest Whitaker) who doesn’t take his skills for granted, Bryan works to clear his name, identify those responsible, and protect his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).

As repetitive it was, though not as offensively so as the brutally unnecessary The Hangover 2, Taken 2 established a formula for this sort of thing – someone goes to Europe, said someone gets “taken,” and Liam Neeson has to save them, usually with some artificial time constraint, and dismantle an unprecedented amount of foreigners to do so.  As patently silly as that premise sounds on paper, there’s something alchemical about the first Taken which made it solidly one of my favorite action movies of all time.

What we have here is a film that doesn’t do any of those things.  Instead, Taken 3 is formulaic in another direction, aligning it more closely with a very generic action film premise, the wrongfully accused protagonist against all the odds.  Aside from the fact that Bryan buys his daughter a large and not-age-appropriate gift at the beginning, there’s little in this character that resembles the man we met in the first film.  Even his special skills are supplanted by an overemphasis on technological research and a “secret hideout” in which Bryan’s friends do most of the skilled labor.

Taken 3 swaps out all of what made the franchise distinct with a script that could be substituted for any action hero at all.  Even the architecture of the film – man being framed – doesn’t fit with the Taken persona.  Forest Whitaker’s cop character seems out of place, too; he walks around reminding us how good Bryan was in the first two films, but he’s still two steps behind while running what appears to be his own parallel investigation into Lenore’s murder which revolves around, bizarrely of all, eating bagels found as evidence at the crime scene.

The film also does a dismal job of stepping all over the character of Kim.  Where Taken 2 had done a nice bit of character development by having Kim more actively involved in the action sequences and rescue mission, Taken 3 reduces her to bystander and then, as the film draws to a close, a sort of obligatory hostage.  To top it all off, she’s pregnant, a plot point which has nothing to do other than invoke paternalistic feelings of protectiveness, a very retrograde approach to female characters.  Much of the film feels dated, including its soundtrack and action editing, but the inability to do something at least a little creative/progressive with Kim is discouraging.

Taken 3 steps away from its immediate predecessor in another dispiriting way when it completely fails to follow up on what I felt was the best part of Taken 2, the beat in which Bryan wearily admitted, “I am tired of it all.”  I loved the idea of a man drawn begrudgingly into an endless cycle of violence and bloodshed, a man who just wanted to settle down with what was left of his family.  Instead, when the plot of Taken 3 really ramps up, Bryan doesn’t show any of that fatigue.  His revenge-o-meter goes from zero to sixty without hesitation, an inconsistency all the more surprising since Olivier Megaton directed both Taken 2 and 3 yet seems to have overlooked what could have made this film stand apart from all the other generic action outings. 

Then there’s the litany of actual film offenses, those moments of flawed logic and absurdities that stretch the boundaries of even the most suspended of beliefs.  The film includes, among other scenes that got me to laugh but not in a good way, a corpse whose wounds do not bleed and indeed which manage to heal postmortem, the collection of evidence that has no material value for the plot, and a Porsche which can outrun a small aircraft on takeoff.  Granted, the first film gave Bryan Mills near-superheroic abilities, but that’s something intrinsic to the character and, I’d argue, somewhat essential in the genre.  Don’t even get me started on the headscratcher of the plot, which is unnecessarily complex in a way that manages to be both predictable and borderline incomprehensible.

Taken 3 isn’t actually bad – it’s engaging enough and Neeson is still enjoyably gruff – but it is preposterous and, I think, ultimately unnecessary.  The real joy of Taken was that it felt fresh and brisk, and stretching it out over the course of two more films just doesn’t add enough to the equation to justify more movies.  My final analysis is that I want to run into the arms of the original Taken and hope that it hasn’t been sullied in the stretching.

Taken 3 is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, and for brief strong language.”  The same standard of bloodless but very physical violence continues here, with gunshots, stabbings, and visceral punches.  Taken 3 has more car chases than the other films, as well as one F-word.

Friends, 2015 is not off to a good start.

Taken 2 (2012)

With Taken, Liam Neeson’s gravelly threat of a “very particular set of skills” led many filmgoers to wonder what was still waiting in that bag of tricks.  While not groundbreakingly original, Taken 2 replicates much of what worked in the first film and adds enough new material to justify the sequel treatment.

When news that a sequel was en route, audiences joked, “Who gets taken in the next one?  The mom?”  Well... yeah.  Taken 2 picks up about a year after the events of the first film, at the funeral of the Albanians killed by Bryan Mills (Neeson).  The families swear revenge on Bryan, who’s currently touring Istanbul with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).  This time, though, it’s Bryan and Lenore who are taken by the grieving father (Rade Šerbedžija) of one of Kim’s late kidnappers.  With the tables turned, Bryan uses his “skills” to coach Kim through a rescue attempt.

Don’t let the synopsis fool you, though – the star is very much still Neeson, with Grace’s role amped up to, mercifully, prevent her from being the damsel in distress once more.  While the premise isn’t wholly original, the film plays up more of Bryan’s “set of skills,” of which I’m sure this filmgoer wasn’t alone in wanting more.  While some of Bryan’s abilities defy any standard of realism, the laughter they elicit isn’t one of incredulous scorn but rather one of unforeseen inevitability.  Of course Bryan could deduce his location using only a grenade and a shoestring; he’s MacGyver by way of Jack Bauer, something the film pulls off by never letting up.

But what the film invents in Bryan’s talents, it never quite innovates beyond the formula of the first one – protective father singlehandedly defends family from evil Albanians.  Many of the scenes in the first film are reused here without new purpose.  Again we have Bryan’s trio of CIA buddies who don’t do much beyond drink beer and giggle at Bryan’s unrequited love for his ex-wife.  There’s the same framing technique of Bryan attempting to do something to help his daughter (singing lessons in the first film, driver’s license here).

Disappointingly, the one thing not replicated is the first film’s sense of humor.  While the audience is chuckling, we’re never really laughing with the characters, as we did in the first; Bryan is more humorless this time around, never really dropping one-liners or quips to accompany his kills.  This different mood is attributable in large part to the fact that Bryan doesn’t have a foil in this film as he did with Jean-Claude in the first; this lack is even more apparent since we see Jean-Claude in an early scene, never to return to him again.  If there’s a third film, I’m for bringing the French policeman back.

Instead, the focus is on the action and the deployment of unseen “skills.”  If the film could be used as a marketing tool for a seven-week course on “How to Acquire Bryan’s Skills,” it’d be successful by leaps and bounds.  The action is thrilling, unrelenting, and enviable; though humorless, the fight and chase scenes are unremitting.  Perhaps, though, the action is less compelling because of how inevitable it seems; having already seen what Bryan can do, the stakes seem somewhat lower here.  In Taken, it seemed he was up against an insurmountable 96 hours to rescue his daughter in the middle of Paris; here, though, his own abduction in Istanbul never seems more threatening than a mosquito bite.  (I haven’t yet decided if this is a strength, which allows the film to focus on how badass Bryan is, or a weakness, which doesn’t give sufficient stakes to justify a Mills-level response.)

Taken 2 does add a new thematic layer – the idea of the cyclical nature of vengeance and the inevitability that blood begets blood.  “Because I am tired of it all,” Bryan wearily intones near the film’s climax; it’s an oddly smart moment nestled inside the film, rejecting the easy popcorn-fueled “Kill ’em dead” attitude you might expect.  This is an idea I’d like to see explored more in a subsequent installment, but its inclusion here demonstrates that the filmmakers have done more than just give us a bigger version of the first film.

Ultimately, Taken 2 is a great sequel but perhaps not a great film.  Newcomers to the franchise won’t find much to thrill them and indeed might wonder, like the song goes, what’s it all about.  But fans of the original will find enough to enjoy here, a few worthwhile additions and enough amped-up repetition; where The Hangover 2 merely replicated the first film with more male nudity, Taken 2 repeats what worked and embellishes it so that it’s not a mere revision of the first.  Though it’s not an A-list cult film like the first, Taken 2 is a B-film that never disappoints.

Taken 2 is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sensuality.”  As in the first film, there are plenty of shootings, stabbings, and fist fights, but only one knife wound is bloody.  Kim has a boyfriend in this film, with whom she makes out in one scene; she runs in a bikini in another.