Alright, so I watched Taken 3: The Takening and um what the hell did I just watch?  This is one of those films where if you have popcorn you will be throwing it at the screen every few minutes.  The story really had nothing to do with the Taken Series even with how bad Taken 2 was it was still cannon to the original, Taken 3 really had nothing to do with the Taken series.

Well no one actually gets taken in Taken 3, so there’s that.  The story it’s self wasn’t that bad, if the film had been made for adults and had been rated R it could have held up to the original.  That was my major issue with this film, it was dumbed down to the point that it pulled me out of the film, there are a ton of examples but one that I’ll share is when Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is in the back of a police car and there is no barrier between the front and back and he’s able to fight two police officers from the back seat then hold a gun on the driver while crawling into the passenger seat from the back seat.  It’s just over the top stupidity with dumbed down, PG friendly violence where you don’t see blood when someone is shot.

Really the acting wasn’t the issue, the directing was the issue, the actors did a fine job with the turd they had to work with, it’s not the actors fault that they had a bad director.  Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, and what little of Famke Jassen, all do fine jobs.  The rest of the cast on the other hand… I think the director said something like “if you could look more mafia scumbags and pedophiles and less like LAPD officers that would be great” because that’s what I thought the whole time they were on screen.

Well I can’t really say I remember any music.  If there was any real music to this film it should say something that I didn’t even remember it.  There was a few things like put records on and music in cars but music played as part of the film’s score, I don’t remember.

In the end this is a sad end to what started off as a great film franchise, I can forgive a lot of the flaws of this film, but the director dumbed the film down so much that on children who have never seen a good down and dirty, blood and guts action film could even remotely enjoy it.  This one is most definitely a skip on my list.