You might be taken ill by Taken III

In the third film of the Taken franchise, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is framed for the murder of his wife. He must evade capture, bring the real killer to justice and clear his own name.

The first Taken film was released back in 2008, the film was exciting, popular and really rather violent. Now, it's none of these things (well except perhaps popular) because Taken 3 was given a 12A rating (PG-13 for those in America) and thus the film lacks someone getting their face smashed in with a fire extinguisher. In all seriousness there is a legitimate point here and that is the toning down of horror films and older movie franchises, such as The Terminator franchise, for a PG-13 audience can be detrimental to the quality of the film.

The reason why studios tone down films is obvious, studios do so to increase the audience size, get more bums on seats and get more money. In the case of Taken 3 the result is a film that has no sting, no bite and no excitement. There's not a cracked skull, splatter of blood or broken bone to be found in Taken 3 (we do have waterboarding though), instead we get weak action and film that is a perfect example of how not to make an action movie. 

Oliver Megatron's direction of the action scenes is nothing short of dreadful. The action scenes are edited at a speed that it makes light look slow in comparison. The lightening quick editing is so utterly incomprehensible that it's impossible to tell what's going on and it's edited at such a fast speed it could probably give those prone to motion sickness actual motion sickness (so you could say that people were taken ill). I jest of course, but the editing is such a poor standard that it's almost impossible to work out what's happening. Even the scenes where there is no action are edited in a way that is just completely unnecessary.

It's probably because of the absurd editing that the film is so toothless in its violence, you can't see any of the violence or any of the punches that are swung or kicks that are lashed out as the film panders to the demands of a PG-13 film. However, the film is peppered with occasional moments of tension and Liam Neeson's performance as Bryan Mills is suitably gruff but the story is so predictable even I figured out who did what whom.

1.5/5