Taken 3 - All Wrong

I really enjoyed Taken and Taken 2, so I saw Taken 3 this past weekend. I thought it would be just as good. Just as great, I mean. I was pumped for it. Because at the conclusion of Taken 2 they had the premise for Taken 3 all set to go. The main character, Brian Mills, played by Liam Neeson, had finally gotten the better of the bad guy, some Albanian Muslim dude whose son Brian Mills had killed in the first Taken movie. But before Mills kills the guy, he asks if he has other sons. The guys says yes, he has two more. And Mills asks if they'll be coming for revenge, too. The dude says yes, for sure. Then after he gives the guy a chance to live, he kills him.

Okay. All set for Taken 3. The guy's other two sons will come for revenge, and Mills will do his thing that involves his particular set of skills. It's what makes the movies great.

BUT NO!  By the way, SPOILER ALERT!! Read no further if you haven't seen Taken 3 yet because I'm going to explain why I was so disappointed with it. And here's why: Mills' wife, er, I mean ex-wife, is murdered. Of course I was under the impression it was that dude's two other sons plotting to get revenge, and they were starting by murdering his ex-wife. BUT NO!! They make up some complete BS about her current husband being involved with Russian mafia guys, who are the bad guys. And to top it all off, as a kind of twist that didn't surprise anyone, it was his ex-wife's husband who was behind the whole thing. And they went out and found an actor, Dougray Scott, to play the part. Because he wasn't the same actor who played the part in the first two movies.

This was a huge let down for me. First, Russian mafia being the bad guys is now just as stereotypical and old as using Italian mafia as bad guys used to be. They have become the default heavies for the movies nowadays. I didn't need to see that in Taken 3, which had already established Albanians as the heavies, and there was NO NEED TO CHANGE THAT. The storyline had already been set! It worked, and it was going to work for Taken 3.

But all good things, as they say, come to an end. Taken 3 was a huge disappointment, and I was sorry I went to see it. If they choose to do Taken 4, and get back to those two remaining sons out for revenge, then maybe they'll get back on track and I'll like it again. We'll see.