Taken 3 (2014) Dir: Olivier Megaton
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This action trilogy is a very mixed bag, as I'm sure some of you will know. I had enjoyed the first film but very much disliked the sequel. With this third film being directed by Olivier Megaton, who did the poor second film, I made sure to keep very low expectations.
The camerawork and general cinematography was pretty sloppy, in all honesty. The film didn't look ugly, per se, but it was painfully generic. There was very little creativity to any of the visuals, which, while not a huge negative, made the film very boring visually.
I actually enjoyed the action sequences quite a lot, to be honest. I thought that they were a lot more enjoyable than the second film, and had much more variety to them too. They weren't all that different from what you see in most other action films, but they worked.
As far as the plot was concerned, it was a huge improvement on the second film, in my opinion. Similarly to some of the other comments I've made about the film, I wouldn't say the story did anything new or creative, but it did at least function; something that the second film failed to do with any competence.
Liam Neeson gave his worst acting performance of the three films, but he was still watchable, at least. I didn't find his more emotional scenes particularly believable, but he did at least have some cool action sequences.
Maggie Grace gave her best performance of the trilogy here - with some fairly strong acting at points. I wouldn't say she was great or anything, but I didn't hate her performance, that much was certain.
Forest Whitaker provided the best performance in the film for me. I quite like him as an actor anyway, but he still seemed the most committed to his role of anyone in the cast, and it definitely showed. He was interesting, sympathetic and fairly believable.
Dougray Scott had flashes of decent acting, but failed to have any consistency, in what admittedly wasn't a very well written role. I will also give mentions to various members of the supporting cast, namely Sam Spruell, Don Harvey, Dylan Bruno, Leland Orser, Famke Janssen; who I wish had a lot more screentime.
Overall, this was a fine action film, which served as a decent enough end to what has been a mediocre trilogy. It was quite clearly a pretty bog-standard action thriller, but it was enjoyable enough to provide an evening's entertainment.
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