THIS WEEK SEES the third installment of the Taken franchise make its way into cinemas.
In this installment, Bryan Mills (AKA the unluckiest man in the world) is wrongfully accused of the murder of his ex-wife and must call upon his “particular set of skills” to track down the real killers.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Reviews for the film have started coming in and, spoiler alert, it won’t be winning any Oscars. Here are some of the choicest quotes.
Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw said of the film:
It’s difficult to know what subtitle to give this. Taken 3: Not Again, or Taken 3: Seriously? or Taken 3: This Is Getting a Bit Much Frankly.
Bradshaw also reluctantly speculated on the possible plot of Taken 4:
I’ve got a sinking feeling it’ll be his grandchild in the next movie.
Variety‘s film critic was similarly tired of Taken’s antics, writing that audiences would be “hostages to tedium”.
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.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote that it failed to live up to its predecessors in pretty much anyway and called its plot implausible. (Well, duh.)
…a stuttering plot comparatively light on action and stuffed with red herrings and inconsequential characters (Forest Whitaker, for one, plays one of the most vacuous roles of his career), Besson’s team has signed off the trilogy with a whimper rather than the kind of unfettered bang delivered by the first two films.
Digital Spy didn’t hold back at all and was fairly scathing throughout its one-star review.
On Liam Neeson:
…dead-eyed, career-worst performance…
On the film itself:
An inert exercise in cash-cow milking…
And the final punch:
…a miserable blend of tin-eared soap opera and clunky action that feels infinitely longer than its 109 minutes…
Finally, Robbie Collin of The Telegraph simply billed it as a “tragedy” where nothing is taken “other than arguably the biscuit”.
Poor Liam.
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