They took his daughter. They took his ex-wife. They took him. Now they’re going to take his daughter (hang on, didn’t they do that already?) after doing something even worse to his ex-wife. But he will find them. And he will kill them. Again and again and again. While it may seem unreasonable to complain that a cynical “threequel” lacks originality, even leading man Liam Neeson looks bored beyond belief as he goes through the motions of hunting down evildoers, looking for all the world like an armed sleepwalker.
This time he finds himself framed for murder and must run around LA causing freeway pile-ups and random shoot-’em-ups until Inspector Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker, doing annoyingly “characterful” things with doughnuts and a rubber band) realises he’s innocent. As before, the ethnic strokes are broad, with bad guys easily identifiable by their funny accents, handy tattoos and terrible taste in tighty-whitey underpants.
There’s a “twist” of course, although it’s signposted so heavily that only those taking stupid pills could possibly be surprised. Texts are read out loud for the hard of thinking, dialogue is redubbed for the younger market(“Mummy, why did the man’s lips say ‘fucking’ when his voice said ‘screwing’?”) and Liam evades death in a manner that would have Kathy Bates screaming: “He didn’t get out of the cockadoodee car!” The tagline promises “It ends here” but the denouement keeps the door open for more. What next? Taken 4: Taken the Piss?
