But in this series, average is an improvement. Megaton‘s epileptic, herky-jerky action sequences are still frustratingly hard to follow, and there’s never a pretence that this is anything more than easy product for an undemanding audience. Neeson is still going through the motions, but he’s backed up by a solid crew of returning regulars and newcomers including Forest Whitaker as a likeably crumpled cop. ‘Taken 3’ scores over its predecessor on almost every level: the stakes are higher, the LA locations are nicely photographed and, best of all, there’s an actual plot, with twists and everything. Then a body is discovered, Bryan is framed, and the chase is on. Daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is unexpectedly pregnant, while ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is falling out of love with her second husband (Dougray Scott) and slipping back into Bryan’s rugged orbit. We catch up with ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) in yet another emotional tangle. The only question was: would writer-producer Luc Besson and director Olivier Megaton be happy just to coast along, offering audiences another brainless cavalcade of shakycam action and growling macho nonsense? (It was Taken off air, if you will.) So until the inevitable reboot from Netflix, Amazon, or another streaming service, that's all for the franchise for the moment.When the dismal ‘Taken 2’ became France’s biggest ever global hit, a third instalment was inevitable.
It explored his journey to becoming the CIA super-spy that audiences know and (begrudgingly) love, but unfortunately, the series won't ever chart his full career or even retool the franchise: Taken was cancelled after poor reviews and ratings following its second season.
Or maybe that would be Taken too far.įor anyone still wanting to see more from the Mills family, there was briefly a Taken TV series on NBC in 2017, starring Clive Standen as a younger Bryan Mills. How cute, but we'd bet money on Bryan teaching his granddaughter to become a ruthless secret agent one day. And in a slightly awkward conversation, Kim tells him that if her unborn child is a girl, she'll call her Lenore. In the wake of Lenore's death and Stuart's subsequent arrest, Bryan clearly learns to accept that his daughter has her own path as a mother now. But the seedy villain reveals that Bryan was let loose on the Russians so he'd kill them all, wiping out Stuart's debt.
John can collect the $12 million life policy as part of a deal he made after owing money to an ex-Spetsnaz agent named Oleg Malankov (Sam Spruell). John is killed so that her husband Stuart St. That's right: Taken 3 is actually about the fragile male ego - just with added torture, gunfights, and explosions.Įssentially, Lenore Mills-St. His ex-wife's new husband (played by Dougray Scott) frames Bryan because he kept seeing Lenore after promising not to. no one gets taken fans needed a new reason to believe the series would deliver a worthy new chapter in Liam. There's no international jet-setting this time around, instead Bryan Mills has to face a threat inside his own family on home soil. Though Taken 3 changed up the series m.o. How unlucky can one former CIA operative with the skills to hunt people down and murder them in a million different ways be?Īfter slaughtering his daughter's kidnappers in Taken and then facing the consequences of his actions in Taken 2, the third film in the franchise heads in a slightly different direction. The PG-13 rating really hurts the movie, the action scenes are tame and uninspired with lots of shaky cam, you would see better fight scenes in a school playground. The editing is ridiculous, One second scenes, totally chopped up. The film stars Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen.The film was released on January 9, 2015. lazy poorly written, clumsy dialogue, directed and shot horribly. Fast-forward to 2014, and the third film in the franchise, Taken 3, sees Bryan framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). Taken 3 (also stylized as Tak3n) is a 2015 American action thriller film directed by Olivier Megaton and written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.It is the sequel to the 2012 film Taken 2 and the third and final film in the Taken film trilogy. It wasn't surprising that writer and director Luc Besson was persuaded to kickstart a franchise revolving around Neeson's Bryan Mills in the years after.
Contains spoilers for the Taken franchiseīack in 2008, Liam Neeson's first Taken film delivered a genuinely surprising thriller that had a compelling story as well as a healthy dose of R-rated violence.