Taken 3 - this time they took the dog

  Liam Neeson returns in the third instalment of the Taken series as Bryan Mills in all of of his growling glory, and apparently he's the one who is on the run even though nobody has been kidnapped. Neeson isn't the only one who is reprising their Taken roles, Famke Janssen is back as Bryan's ex-wife Lenore St. John, Maggie Grace is the daughter from hell that is always attracting danger. The new faces in the film are Stuart St. John, Lenore's husband who is played by Dougray Scott, even though the character was played by Xander Berkeley in the first movie. Forest Whitaker appears as Sgt. Frank Dotzler, an intuitive police inspector trying to put all of the pieces together. Spoilers ahead!

  So the film begins with a guy being killed by a group of Russians and them speaking about some one owing them money. The next scene shows Liam Neeson buying a giant panda for Kim's birthday, the leads to an awkward chat with the boyfriend and then leads to Bryan leaving and chatting to Lenore on the phone, this then leads to them having dinner and possibly rekindling the fire they once had with each other. A day later Stuart shows up telling him to back off because he's getting to close to Lenore. 

  

  Some time later Lenore suddenly texts Bryan to meet with him at his house, but he find her lying on his bed with her throat slashed, police find Bryan and try to arrest him. Mills knows he's being set up and break free and goes on the run, he learns that it was a group of Russian mobsters that took her and killed her. Inspector Dotzler is in charge of capturing Mills but even he knows that it wasn't him that did it. 

  After meeting with Kim at her college, she thinks that Stuart is involved some how, Bryan decides to go after him. This leads to an impossible car chase, insane shoot out in convenience store and alot of smashed bottles. Bryan catches up with Stuart and he reveals that he owed money to the Russian mobsters and he got Lenore killed and Kim will be next. 

  Bryan gets his old special forces buddies to help him protect Kim and bring down the Russian Mobsters, they break in to a skyscraper and Bryan unleashes his 'particular set of skills' on everyone, he goes one on one with the mobster leader only to find out that both him and the mobsters were both tricked by Stuart. Kim once again gets kidnapped, this time by Stuart and Bryan chases after him. 

  To end this movie Bryan basically kills a load of people, f**ks up a porsche by driving it into a plane and possibly endangering the life of his only daughter that so happens to be pregnant and still beats the bad guy, mission accomplished Bryan Mills. 

  Altogether this movie isn't actually bad its just doesn't belong in the trilogy, its got lots of action, a good cast and a decent storyline. The setting of the film is very disappointing, the first two movies were in really interesting, naturally beautiful and in some cases quite dangerous locations, but typical Los Angeles doesn't really compare to Paris or Istanbul. The camera work and editing is really chaotic and choppy in some scenes, it obvious they were doing that to create tension and atmosphere but instead it made the movie very hard to watch.

  A major positive element in the film was Forest Whitaker's performance, he played his character so well that I actually wanted him to catch Bryan Mills simply to see if he carry the movie all by himself. Each scene Dotzler was in he was the strongest character and that most compelling one to watch at that. Whitaker's character is major part of the plot and storytelling, he's the only character trying to put all of the pieces together without punching someone in the face,  and he's actually doing his job as a detective.

  One scene really stood out to me in a bad way, the showdown between Bryan Mills and the Russian mob leader was rather uncomfortable to watch, mainly because I'm seeing Liam Neeson getting his ass kicked by a guy only wearing pair of Y fronts. This scene also shows that every major villain in the Taken trilogy has to be Eastern European not American, Canadian or British. 

  Sadly the movie continued the annoying Taken tradition of having a really cheesy ending that would make anybody feel awkward and want the movie to hurry up and end. Its understandable that they put the 'nice' ending in to counter balance the grim tone, but that tone is non existent in the film, hence why the happy ending didn't have the desired effect on the audience this time around. 

  What disappointed me the most about this film is that Bryan Mills is the one that is supposed to be chased by an unstoppable pursuer but the movie changes into a more violent Mission Impossible sequel, which genuinely makes me sad because I was expecting to see Bryan Mills overcome incredible odds and come out changed forever, but instead it follows the original worn out Taken formula. 

  The two saving graces of this film is that it is miles better than Taken 2, and if you just watch the movie as if it wasn't apart of the Taken franchise its really enjoyable just don't expect a performance equal to Schindler's List from Liam Neeson. 

I think it is safe to say that the version of Taken 3 below is the one we'd all want to see.