Given that Mills walked away Scot-free from double-figure body counts in Europe, watching him evade arrest by Inspector Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) doesn’t yield much in terms of suspense or surprises. The possibility of Lenore and Mills rekindling their relationship is put on hold, however, when he’s forced to go on the run for a crime he didn’t commit. As he said to Lenore in the previous film: “I’ll be OK. It’s the people following me who’re gonna have a problem.” Her dad, however, still believes that, after having hurled a few hand grenades and driven a stolen car through a shower of bullets, she’d still be content to play with a stuffed panda on her birthday.Įqually troubled is Lenore, who seeks consolation as her marriage to filthy-rich Stuart (Dougray Scott) is on the rocks. Without someone to save, the concept of a race against time is seriously weakened. While family matters were kept short and sweet in the other two installments, “Taken 3” stretches out the kitchen-sink drama endlessly: Mills’ daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), who was 17 when she was first kidnapped, is now a college student facing serious adult problems. Despite the more elaborate action setpieces and heightened casualties, the premise remained just as basic and clear: The shocking way in which the hostages are taken, and the methodical manner in which the retired CIA agent tracked them, generated tremendous excitement. The sequel, made four years later, reversed the pattern by having the Albanians’ vengeful relatives kidnap Mills and his ex-wife, Lenore ( Famke Janssen). Made as a low-budget B-movie that sent up U.S. politics and values even as it emulated American genre films, it grossed $227 million worldwide.

In “Taken” (2008), helmed by Pierre Morel, Neeson’s Los Angeles-based Bryan Mills went after Albanian slave traders who kidnapped his 17-year-old daughter in Paris. bow, the Fox release will draw crowds simply because it’s supposedly the last installment of the lucrative franchise, but they’ll just be hostages to tedium. Opening in Hong Kong on New Year’s Day, a week ahead of its U.S.

French director Olivier Megaton, who at least paced “Taken 2” with workmanlike efficiency, executes the pedestrian plot without a shred of tension or finesse. Running out of kidnapped relatives for Liam Neeson’s ex-CIA killing machine to rescue, scribes Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen turn him into a fugitive framed for murder in “ Taken 3,” a mind-numbing, crash-bang misfire that abandons chic European capitals for the character’s own backyard.

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