Bryan Mills (Liam Nesson) is friends with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) who is having problems with her husband Stewart while Bryan’s daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) finds out she is pregnant.   Soon Lennie is found murdered in Bryan’s apartment and he is framed for her murder.  Bryan goes on the run as he looks to clear his name and find out who killed his ex-wife while a thick headed Los Angeles detective (Forrest Whitaker) tries to bring Bryan in.  The detective knows how smart Bryan is and soon Bryan finds out it has something to do with Russian criminals.     He must to work his certain set of skills with help from his old buddies as he searches for the ones responsible for Lenore’s death while on the run from the LAPD (who mostly have a stick up their butt while wanting to bring him and underestimating him like dummies).

 

TAKEN 3 is an improvement over TAKEN 2.  It is almost as good as the first TAKEN.   It brings closer to the saga while delivering some good action sequences.   The big complaint I have is that some of the shots in the climax are too tight where they could be farther out to better track the action overall and keep track of what is happening.  The best shot action sequence in the director’s career is from an early film, RED SIREN, and I think the director of photography could have taken some cues from the great hotel shoot out in RED SIREN when they shot and framed some of the action in the climatic scenes. If you were disappointed by TAKEN 2, this latest TAKEN does redeem itself even though it still isn’t as fun as the first film.    The box office may make way for TAKEN 4 (which Liam Nesson is open to).   Go see it if you’re in need of seeing Liam Nesson kick ass and play detective for the truth, but I hope you don’t expect the cops to be smart (which most of them in TAKEN 3 aren’t as they are too busy wanting to arrest Bryan Mills).

 

This review is ©1-12-2015 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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