Taken 3 review: Liam Neeson and dead wife rings false in sequel

By Mike Valdez | January 10, 2015

Taken 3 arrives with several challenges. It’s an attempt at a third installment in a trilogy whose sequel was already too-similar and inferior to the original. It comes after star Liam Neeson went and made A Walk Among The Tombstones, a movie whose ads came off as so similar to that of Taken that some people mistakenly though it was Taken 3. And then there’s the fact that there is simply no one left in his family to be kidnapped. That’s why, as the TV ads immediately gave away, his wife is murdered at the beginning of this film – and that’s where the film goes awry. Our review:

The first two Taken films were both based on a particular premise: Liam Neeson spends the movie trying to rescue a member of his family. What ensues is dark, serious, gritty, and overly violent – but it’s also centered around the notion that if he succeeds, he’ll be able to put his family back together again. In the first film it was his daughter who was taken, and in the sequel it was his wife. Killing her off in this film doesn’t feel like a violation of the film’s sacred character base. But it does set up a Taken 3 film with a fundamentally different tone in which Neeson is grimly seeking revenge instead of diligently trying to save the day.

That’s simply not the same thing. For those who enjoyed the first two movies strictly based on the violent confrontations and watching Liam Neeson act like a vigilante badass, Taken 3 will be enough. But for those who felt the tone of the first two movies was what made the whole thing work, the tone here simply rings false – and that’s why our review can only offer this movie 2.5 out of 5 stars, despite yet another strong acting performance by Liam Neeson.