Taken 3 Movie

Cast: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell

Direction: Olivier Megaton

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 52 minutes

 

 

Story: Bryan Mills (Neeson) lives a quiet life, takes care of his teenaged daughter Kim (Grace) and feels tenderly for his ex-wife Lenore (Janssen), who has been having problems with current husband Stuart (Scott). Lenore is found dead in Bryan's apartment one afternoon and is the cops' chief suspect for her murder. But Bryan's chief objectives are to find Lenore's killers, protect his daughter and prove his innocence.

 

Review: Mills is not your ordinary tough guy. He possesses deadly skills thanks to his military and CIA background, but is also extremely ethical and discerning about when and how to use those skills. His prime concerns are his ex-wife and daughter. And when someone messes with that, he as we've seen in the previous Taken movies, he finds them and eliminates them.

 

Screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen smoothly set up a situation that places Mills squarely in the police crosshairs as the Lenore's murderer. The film opens with some Russian mobsters who capture and kill the accountant of a company, the boss of which owes money to the mafia. Meanwhile, Mills visits his daughter ahead of her birthday and Lenore drops in at his place later on as he is making dinner. Everything changes when he comes home to her corpse the next day, after receiving a message from Lenore asking to meet. Thereafter, Mills must evade the cops, seek revenge and protect Kim. Investigating inspector Dotzler's (Whitaker) instincts tell him that all is not what it seems in this case.

What works greatly to the movie's credit is the pacing (never a dull moment here!) and that sense of 'What's going to happen next?' Mills and his group of friends rely heavily on technology to stay ahead of the cops as well as to nab the bad guys. Dotzler and team try to predict what Mills will do next. Spruell's don Malankov, suitably debauched and with a Spetsnaz background, is as nasty and cold-hearted as they come. But Grace's Kim is really the most riveting. All in all, a suitable swansong for the franchise.