"Taken 3" Review

Bad movies are sometimes referred to as "junk food for the mind." Using this criteria, "Taken 3" (or "Tak3n") is the Heart Attack Grill : so unapologetically grotesque that you can't help but admire it a little. The third entry in the franchise sees the once visceral, surprisingly emotional, high-stakes thriller become a parody of itself, as Liam Neeson fumbles around an inconsistent plot and hilarious dialogue. This is the stuff RiffTrax was made for.

Neeson reprises his role as Bryan Mills, a ex-government operative with a "particular set of skills," including kicking ass, mowing waves of bad guys down with a single pistol, and making the greatest threatening phone calls ever seen on screen. After he's framed for the murder of ex-wife Lenore (Famke Jenssen), Bryan searches for the men responsible, getting wrapped in a whirlwind of criminal syndicates and botched business deals, all while a LAPD inspector (Forest Whitaker) is on his tail, ready to bring him in.

With a movie whose title replaces "e" with "3", I don't expect greatness, but rather over-the-top, impossibly ridiculous fun. And on that front, "Tak3n" succeeds, filling the theater unintentionally with laugh-out-loud scenes of implausibility and writing so silly, I half expect a "wah wah" to follow. Neeson and Whitaker are in on the joke, hamming it up as they quip at each other. Whitaker, in particular, looks like he's fighting off laughter in each scene, glancing around as if to address the crew, saying "Do you guys see this mess?" Throw in the usual bumbling antics from the cops and you should have cheesy gold.

Here's the catch though: "Taken 3" will hold a place in my heart as one of the worst directed action movies I've ever seen. The action is incomprehensible, doubly damaged by frantic edits and the shakiest cinematography I've ever seen. Walking out of the theater, people reported headaches and nausea; the eye is simply not equipped to try to make sense of this nonsense masqueraded as "intensity." There's a scene in which Bryan jumps over a fence, and the movie takes 12 cuts in order to do what should be done in one. Were the editors sabotaging the film or was director Oliver Megaton (Taken 2, Transporter 3) so enamored by the angles he demanded them all be put in?

The movie rallies back in the end with a satisfying two-headed climax and a relaxed camera, but by this point, it's too late. "Taken 3" provided a hilarious theater experience for me, but if you're not here to crack jokes, and are expecting a fulfilling conclusion to the trilogy, you'll be disappointed, or in the worst-case scenario, insulted. If anything, watch it on cable with your friends.

Thank you for reading; I'm the Man Without A Plan, signing off.