Taken 3

After a busy morning at A&P we got to Cardiff in good time.. Enough time in fact for Graham and I to catch a film. There was two films on Graham's radar, American Sniper and Taken 3. In order for us to make it back home in time to demolish a curry and Graham's expensive bottle of Rioja we opted for a 3.40pm Taken 3..

Now, I think we're all in agreement that the first of the Taken trilogy is awesome. That's a given.. Taken 2 on the other hand was the other end of the scale.. To the point of embarrassing.. I put this all down to Mr Megaton (he of Transporter 3 fame) and his general disregard for coherence mainly..

So it was with a heavy heart I find out he's taken the helm once again.. Now I'm willing to give everyone a second chance (or third,fourth and fifth in the case of Mr M.Knight Shambolic-film-athon) and so I grabbed a bottle of water and took my seat.

Taken 1, they took his daughter, Taken 2, they took his ex wife (and.. um.. Him!) and now Taken 3... they're just taken the piss..

In this one Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is living on his own in a small apartment. He jogs around the block and still gives his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) embarrassing, age inappropriate gifts for her birthday. His ex, 'Lenny' (played by the ever gorgeous Famke Janssen), is having marital problems at home with her current husband Stuart (Dougray Scott) and, as it turns out still has the hots for Bry. Throw into this a Russian gangster, his evil henchmen (one of which is local Cardiff boy Andrew Howard) and his quest to retrieve some money he's owed and you have all the makings of an action thriller..

Or so you'd think...

OK, let's start with the action. What Mr Megaton has done here is to take the 'shaky cam' principal and turn it up to 11.. I'm starting to sound like my parents when they used to tell me "it's too loud" and perhaps I am out of touch with today's action movies.. But surely when you can't tell what the hell is going on that can't be good film making can it? There was a particular car chase when I lost the will to live.. It was so poorly directed I still have no idea what happened despite going over and over it in my head.. I know how it started and how it ended.. But the actual chase?!? You want to see how to do a good car chase involving 'shaky cam' watch The Raid 2.

The dialogue was .... just ridiculous.. 

I think perhaps I've seen too much.. Maybe I need to step back and not over analyse these popcorn movies. Just take them for what they are.. 

But popcorn doesn't have to be rubbish. The aforementioned Raid 2, Equaliser and pretty much any Marvel movie are all popcorn but far,far better.. 

*** there now follows Spoilers ***

OK, there are three things that really bothered me..

1) The main henchman gets shot in his bare, tattooed chest... twice... and doesn't bleed..??

2) Bryan steels a Porche and manages to chase down a jet about to take off and, take out its front landing gear..?!

3) There's no blood (see point 1) but it's OK to torture someone by waterboarding them.?!?

Overall a disappointing *1/2 star movie.. It has no redeeming features that I can think off.  Although it wasn't quite as offensive as Die Hard 5..