Taken 3: Time to be taken again

TAKEN 3
*ing: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell, Leland Orser
Rated: 6.5/10
Bryan Mills is back and in the same style. He has the same kind of (personal) job to do, he is as agile, fit, fast and as deadly as he was in other Takens. His job too is almost the same — save daughter from lean and mean kidnappers, this time the Russians who have nothing really to do with him. Yes, his daughter has grown up enough to reject a giant Panda for a birthday gift from dad and also turn pregnant. His wife Lenore is there for a short and sweet interlude, but more importantly, on a much bigger job of getting the story going. For, writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen set up the entire two-hour premise of what they are calling the “final Taken” on Lenore’s largely unexplained murder.
Fans of the Taken series will not be disappointed by this one too as Liam Neeson is vintage stuff, in fact so vintage that you can predict all his moves even if the LAPD chief is unable to. Director Olivier Megaton has kept this one light and airy with the story rolling out of Mills wife turning up dead at his apartment, unannounced. The obvious things follow — Mills is suspect No. 1, LAPD is on his hunt but the master evader is on to a bigger trails which, obviously, leads to his daughter’s expected kidnapping. The kidnapping itself is brief and much later into the movie, thanks to Mills knowing pretty well that if it is the Taken series, it has to be his daughter who is the ultimate target.
The film does not hold on to the suspense for very long and is not scared of having it guessed by avid spectators. That may sound like a death knell for a murder mystery thriller but Taken 3, largely on the familiar shoulders of a seasons black ops ex agent Mills, played to perfection by Neeson, takes the stride of interest with ease. The fact that the story is just too familiar, well that’s one blemish views can deal with, especially in a lean week.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, January 11, 2015

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Mission impossible: Rogue nation -- Ethan Hunt back with bang

Staring:  Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Jeremy Reyner & Rebecca Ferguson Rated : 8/10 Last time Ethan Hunt had your jaw dropping and you praying fervently for his life when mounted the sky scraping Burj Khalifa in Dubai to dangle from dizzying heights. This time, he does the same — and in all earnestness — when he dangles from the outer door of a military aircraft carrying nerve gas all those 20,000 feet high swaying with terrifying winds, hanging on to dear life literally with his finger nails. This is the fifth time since 1996 that Tom Cruise, as the inscrutable Ethan Hunt, has kept his promise of entertaining his loyal viewers with thrills, fills, kills and a little bit of unsaid romance — of course with a fellow agent. Rogue Nation was initially being touted as the last of the Mission Impossible series but seeing the youthfulness of Hunt, and probably the meticulously ‘kept-high’ entertainment value that this James-Bond lookalike series always delivers, C...
Read more