Taken 3 (2014)

Taken 3 (2014) - Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace - The franchise continues when tragedy means Bryan has to go off-grid not only to protect his daughter, but prove his innocence.

Taken 3 is a slight departure from the previous two films.  As my husband said as the previews were rolling, "Who has he got left that they can kidnap?"  The writers must have had the same thought...
instead of the usual "papa-bear has to get back his cub" scenario, we're treated to Bryan using his considerable skills to seek vengeance and solve a mystery.

It's the familiar mix of fast-paced action sequences and sneaky spy-craft we've come to expect.  I did not care for the change in actor for Stuart, the evil stepfather.  Perhaps the other, older Stuart wasn't up for the action sequences, or maybe they thought he was too benign-looking for this particular script.  In any case, it was a little off-putting, even towards the end when I should have been used to it.

I did not craft for this movie, as it was our dinner-time entertainment, but there was one laugh out loud moment (and I probably shouldn't have, but when he told him his Russian accent was terrible, it struck me as funny), and three holy crap moments.  You'll know those when you see them.

While I realize that the idea of a single man having so many incidences of kidnapping in his life at this point would be utterly ridiculous, this particular plot changed the tone of the movie just enough that it didn't feel like it belonged in the franchise... more like they took an existing script and dropped in familiar characters for sales ability.

Overall I give this a solid four out of five stars.  It is very entertaining, but when you have a trilogy like this, by the third movie there is an expectation of the "flavor" in that third film, and this one just tasted too different from the rest.  It also slowed down in spots where maybe it shouldn't have.  I really felt that we could have had a little more depth to Forest Whitaker's Inspector Dotzler character too, if only to explain his switch from utter rigidity to semi-flexible.

Save the knitting during this movie for the second viewing.  Since Bryan is often working alone, there are long stretches of non-dialog scenes where you're going to have to pay attention to the visuals.